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FIGURES FROM AMERICAN W DRY 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 

BY 

DAVID SAVILLE MUZZEi, itt ^. 



FIGURES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY 
Each 12mo. $1.50 net 

Now Ready 
THOMAS JEFFERSON 

By David Saville Muzzey 
JEFFERSON DAVIS 

By Armistead C. Gordon 

Published Later 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 

By Henry Ford Jones 
ROBERT E. LEE 

By Dr. Douglas Southall Freeman 

Further volumes will follow at short intervals, 
the list including WASHINGTON, LINCOLN, 
WEBSTER, GRANT, CLEVELAND, and others. 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, PUBLISHERS 



FIGURES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 



BY 



DAVID SAVILLE MUZZEY, Ph.D. 

ASSOCIATE PHOFESSOB OF HI8TOBT IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
NEW YOBK 



Ab eo libertas a quo spiritus 
He that gave us life gave us liberty 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1918 



Copyright, 1918, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published September, 1918 



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PREFACE 

The story of illustrious men cannot be too often 
retold. Like great outstanding mountain-peaks, 
these men invite description but elude definition; 
they provoke examination but defy exhaustion. 
The changing hues of political atmosphere, the 
shifting perspective of social and economic theories, 
combine with the peculiar equipment, apperception, 
penchants, and even (alas !) prejudices of each bi- 
ographer to make any and every interpretation of 
his hero only a partial, restricted, and temporary 
one. We grasp so much of the spirit as we can com- 
prehend — and as there are infinite gradations of 
comprehension, so there are infinite varieties of 
portrayal. The wonder is not that there are so 
many different interpretations of the lives of great 
men, but rather that there is so large a consensus 
in the case of a great number of them. 

Of this number, however, Thomas Jefferson is 
not one. Though placed by the common consent 
of scholars in the first class of American statesmen, 
with Franklin, Washington, Hamilton, Webster, 
and Lincoln, Jefferson seems far less willing than 
any of his illustrious compeers to fall into his defini- 
tive place of honor. Washington and Lincoln were 
maligned in life as no other Americans have been; 



vi PREFACE 

their abuse, like their merit, was superlative. But 
to-day their merit alone remains, acknowledged by- 
all. No one contests Benjamin Franklin's position 
as our first great statesman, philosopher, and scien- 
tist — the man who raised common sense to the level 
of genius, and made the name America known and 
respected in the world. Few to-day, even though 
they may detest his politics, would deny to Alex- 
ander Hamilton the title of the master genius of 
American finance or refuse to acknowledge the 
unique contribution of the Federalist to political 
theory. But Thomas Jefferson is still a subject 
for acrimonious criticism and chivalrous defense. 
The campaign controversies of the year 1800 have 
not yet died down to silence. The perpetuation or 
the refutation of slanders, objurgations, innuendoes 
occupies even the latest of Jefferson's biographers. 
The very men often who acclaim him cannot re- 
frain from sneers; and even his bitter political 
enemies lean on his authority. A Populist senator 
of the last generation remarked that "every opinion 
delivered in the Senate of the United States was 
backed by a quotation from Thomas Jefferson." 
His name is cited more often than any other in our 
political platforms, his portrait hangs with Wash- 
ington's and Lincoln's in our convention halls, his 
principles are appealed to as the creed of every true 
American. Surely, there is no stranger problem of 
our political psychology than this mixture of venera- 



PREFACE vii 

tion and vituperation, of inspiration and exaspera- 
tion, still provoked by the mention of the name of 
Thomas Jefferson. 

Suggestions in explanation of this anomaly will 
appear frequently in the following pages. Here I 
can only urge the obvious but too often neglected 
truism that the excellences of men are diverse, and 
that genius, as Lord Acton said long ago, deserves 
to be judged by its own best performance. To call 
Kreisler a second-rate fiddler because he cannot 
sing like Caruso, or Botticelli a mere dauber because 
he does not paint in the style of Raphael, appears 
at once as arrant nonsense; yet many a respectable 
historian has based his whole condemnatory judg- 
ment of Jefferson on the fact that he was not like 
Hamilton. Indeed, no more astonishingly persistent 
prejudice can be found in our American historiog- 
raphy than the treatment of these two great men 
like twin buckets in a well, alternately elevated or de- 
pressed according as an historian of the Federalist or 
the Republican school manipulated the chain. Jef- 
ferson was in public life almost continuously from 
his entrance into the Virginia House of Burgesses 
in 1769 to his retirement from the presidency in 
1809. During less than four of those forty years 
was he in direct contact with Hamilton in the stormy 
scenes around Washington's cabinet table. Grave 
and important differences between these men were 
there revealed, to be sure; disagreement on the 



viii PREFACE 

extent and nature of the powers of the central govern- 
ment, on the relative value of urban-industrial 
and agricultural communities, on the capacity of 
the common people for self-government. But im- 
portant as these matters are, they by no means 
exhaust the interests of Jefferson's many-sided ac- 
tivity; nor should they be dwelt on, as they often 
have been, to the exclusion or obscuration of his 
splendid services to our diplomacy and public law, 
to the reform of inveterate social despotisms, to 
the clarification of the political philosophy of democ- 
racy, and to the advancement of freedom of thought, 
speech, and creed through a widely extended system 
of public education. 

It has been my desire to present the whole man 
Jefferson in this modest volume, and to present him 
as far as possible in the first person. The portrait 
need not be less faithful because the canvas is small; 
though the form and size of my book are them- 
selves a sufficient disclaimer of any attempt to add 
an "original contribution" to the mass of Jeffer- 
sonian scholarship. I have wished only to write a 
truthful and readable account of the life of a great 
American citizen, who served his fellow-citizens long 
and devotedly in public office, and who will continue 
to serve his fellow-men so long as freedom is loved 

and fought for. 

D. S. M. 

Columbia University, New York, 
1918. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Equipment and Apprenticeship 1 

II. The Declaration of Independence. ... 26 

III. The Reform of the Virginia Code. ... 52 

IV. Jefferson as War Governor 75 

V. The Mission to France 101 

VI. In Washington's Cabinet 135 

VII. The Republican Triumph 172 

VIII. Jefferson the Expansionist . 213 

IX. The Struggle for Neutrality 246 

X. Jefferson in Retirement 286 

Index 315 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 

CHAPTER I 
EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 



But exercise produces habit, and in the instance of which we speak 
the exercise being of the moral feelings, produces a habit of thinking and 
acting virtuously. (Jefferson to Robert Skipwith, August 3, 1771.) 



A few years after the affable and indolent King 
Charles II returned from his "travels" and took up 
his abode in the royal palace of Whitehall, which 
had been polluted by the presence of Oliver and his 
saints, a certain William Randolph, gentleman, from 
Warwickshire, who had sacrificed most of his patri- 
mony in the defense of Charles's martyred father, 
came to the royal colony of Virginia and started his 
fortunes anew at Turkey Island, on the broad banks 
of the lower James. Randolph traced his descent 
through a long line of nobles, warriors, and states- 
men to the royal Earl of Murray, half-brother of the 
ill-fated Mary, Queen of the Scots. He married 
Mary Isham, daughter of a baronet, and from this 
distinguished couple descended a goodly number of 



2 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

the men who have made the name of the Old 
Dominion illustrious. 1 In the year 1738 a daughter 
of the house of Randolph left the rich halls of the 
"tidewater aristocracy " to follow her more plebeian 
husband up the river to his frontier farm of a thou- 
sand acres in the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge, where 
five years later she became the mother of Thomas 
Jefferson. 

The Jeffersons could make no boast of gentle 
blood, but their yeoman stock was not without 
honor in the colony. Their ancestor had come from 
Wales, so the tradition ran, from beneath the shadow 
of Mount Snowdon. A Jefferson had sat for 
Flower de Hundred in the famous House of Bur- 
gesses convened by Governor Yeardley in the little 
church at Jamestown in 1619 — the first legislative 
body on the soil of America; and Jeffersons of the 
seventeenth century were accepted as sons-in-law 
by the burgesses and even by a speaker of the house. 
But the true founder of the family was the man who 
in 1738 took Jane Randolph into the wilderness, 
"where the trails of the hostile Monacons or Tusca- 
roras were yet fresh on the lands." Peter Jefferson, 

1 Besides the Randolphs themselves (Peyton, first president of 
the Continental Congress; John the eccentric, of Roanoke; Edmund, 
attorney-general and secretary of state in Washington's cabinet); 
William Stith, the historian of Virginia; John Marshall, for thirty- 
four years chief justice of the supreme court; Richard Bland, the 
celebrated Revolutionary leader; Robert E. Lee, the idol of the 
Southern Confederacy, and Thomas Jefferson could trace their de- 
scent directly to the aristocratic ancestors of Turkey Island. 



EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 3 

then thirty years of age, was the finest type of the 
American pioneer — tall and straight, strong as an 
Homeric god, without a drop of fear or meanness 
in his blood, honest as the daylight, industrious, 
public-spirited, sociable, and intensely human. He 
had had little schooling, but his innate nobility of 
mind drew him to the companionship of the noblest 
authors. Addison, Swift, and Shakespeare were fa- 
vorites, whose works he delighted to read aloud to 
his family around the evening fire of logs. , Honors 
and moderate wealth came to him as the years 
passed. He was made a justice of the peace and 
surveyor for the new county of Albemarle, in which 
his lands lay, then was appointed colonel of the 
militia of his county, and finally, in the disastrous 
year of Braddock's defeat (1755), he was elected a 
member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. He 
survived this crowning honor but two years, dying 
suddenly on August 17, 1757, near his fiftieth birth- 
day. 

Thomas Jefferson was fourteen years old when 
his father died, and was already showing the happy 
result of the mixture of the blood of the Jeffersons 
and the Randolphs by the blend of strength and 
grace in his nature. From Peter Jefferson he had 
his tall frame and serious mind, his capacity for labor, 
his self-reliance, and above all, the robust demo- 
cratic faith of the frontier. ' At the same time the 
gentler qualities of the Randolph blood appeared in 



4 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

a certain suavity of manner and extreme delicacy of 
taste, in his idealism, his musical appreciation, his 
"almost feminine sensitiveness." He could have 
appreciated Goethe's famous quatrain, except for 
the last infinitive: 

"Vom Vater nab' ich die Statur, 
Des Lebens ernstes Fuhren; 
Vom Mutterchen die fron* Natur, 
Die Lust zu fabuliren." 



Like many a "self-made" man who has reached 
easy circumstances, Peter Jefferson wanted his son 
to enjoy the education which he himself had missed. 
He left special instructions that Thomas should have 
a thorough training in the classics, and the boy's 
tutors carried out the father's will with zeal; for to 
the end of his days Jefferson protested that he would 
rather have been deprived of the paternal estate 
than to have missed his classics. He proved the 
truth of Cicero's panegyric on Archias by making 
those studies the food of youth and the joy of old 
age, the adornment of his prosperity and the solace 
of his adversity. About two and a half years after 
his father's death the young Jefferson wrote a short, 
businesslike note to his guardian, John Harvey, sug- 
gesting that it might be better for his serious appli- 
cation to study, for his wider acquaintance with men 
and books, and for the economy of the household 



EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 5 

at Shadwell 1 if he went away to college. So in 1760 
the young man of seventeen rode down the river to 
Williamsburg and entered William and Mary Col- 
lege, next to Harvard the oldest college in the colo- 
nies. 

Williamsburg was not a very imposing town, with 
its two hundred houses and its unpaved streets, 
across whose deep mud-gullies the pedestrian picked 
Ins careful way. But it was the capital of the col- 
Dny, where the burgesses met and where the gov- 
ernor's mansion stood as the centre of the social life 
3f the tidewater aristocracy. It was a decided event 
n the life of the impressionable lad from the pied- 
nont region when he was taken up by his fashion- 
able relatives and friends at the capital. He grati- 
ied his passion for riding, attended parties, from 
vhich he carried into his class-rooms distracting 
thoughts of Virginia beauties, and even became a 
nember of a little club of four who met regularly 
tround the dinner-table of the convivial governor, 
Fauquier. He was somewhat shocked when he 
nade a report of his first winter's expenses to his 
;uardian, to find how much his innocent dissipations 
tad cost; and for amends made the very honorable 
uggestion that the sum be charged exclusively to 

1 Shadwell was the name of the house which Peter Jefferson built 
a the Rivanna, given in honor of his bride, Jane Randolph, who 
as born m the parish of Shadwell, London. The mansion at Shad- 
ell was burned in February, 1770, shortly after Jefferson had begun 
le work on Monticello. 



6 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

his own share of the paternal inheritance. The next 
year he made a more substantial sort of amends in 
devotion to his work. 

A youth of less sense and character than Jefferson, 
without rebuke or restraint from his guardian, would 
have had his head turned by the flattering notice of 
the Williamsburg aristocrats, and would probably 
have considered it the most manly thing to do to 
imitate the governor in his devotion to the gaming- 
table. Many years later, when he was President of 
the United States, Jefferson wrote a letter to his 
grandson, who was away from home at school, warn- 
ing him of the dangers which he himself had escaped, 
and (like Warren Hastings, reviewing his career in 
India), expressing wonder at his own " moderation' I 
in the " various sorts of bad company with which he \ 
[I] associated from time to time." The letter hasi 
furnished a good deal of amusement for Jefferson's 
hostile critics, who see in it only a pedant's didactic 
sermon on his own extraordinary and precocious 
sagacity. But such a judgment only returns on the 
head of the critic. Jefferson's mastery of his own 
spirit in this year of his first choice of the paths of 
Heracles in Williamsburg was perhaps the most sig- 
nificant act of his whole long life. With the begin- 
ning of his second and last year at the college, he 
threw himself into his work with wonderful single- 
ness of purpose, his " assault on omniscience" win- 
ning for him the college degree at the end of the 



EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 7 

year. Probably this rapid success tells us more of 
the standards of scholarship at William and Mary 
than of the actual intellectual attainments of Jeffer- 
son at the age of eighteen; but the important fact 
remains that he had dedicated himself, with a 
fidelity that never weakened, to the jealous service 
of the goddess of truth. 

After his graduation Jefferson began the study of 
law in the office of George Wythe, one of the most 
brilliant ornaments of the Virginia bar, the privilege 
of whose professional guidance was afterward shared 
by Jefferson's younger kinsman, John Marshall, and 
also by Henry Clay. Wythe was attracted at once 
to the promising young student, who many years 
later, on the verge of eighty, wrote in reminiscent 
gratitude: "Mr. Wythe continued to be my faithful 
and beloved Mentor in youth, and my most af- 
fectionate friend through life." The breadth and 
profundity of Jefferson's knowledge of law, as 
shown in his reform of the code of Virginia, in his 
diplomatic correspondence in France, and in his 
despatches as secretary of state, are sufficient testi- 
mony to the use he made of the privilege of the 
advice and example of George Wythe. 

If Jefferson's apprenticeship in the law was long, 
it was because of his passion for thoroughness. 
Every step in knowledge won opened his view on a 
wider vista of knowledge to be attained. He was 
not content with accumulating facts and cases. Be- 



8 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

neath the harsh style and blunt reasoning of Coke 
on Littleton (the "dull old scoundrel") he detected 
and approved the political philosophy of the Whigs; 
while he thought that the student of Blackstone 
would only "slip backward into Toryism" on his 
smooth phrases. From the beginning he took the 
study of the law as an historical training in the prin- 
ciples of jurisprudence, and not simply a hasty pro- 
fessional equipment to fit him to win cases in the 
courts of Virginia. His friend, the jovial, adven- 
turous, confident Patrick Henry, was admitted to 
the bar after studying law for six weeks; but Jeffer- 
son did not apply for a license until 1767, five years 
after he had entered Wythe's office. 

Jefferson practised law for seven years, until, as 
he says in his Memoir, "the Revolution shut up the 
courts of justice." He was not a good barrister, for 
he lacked all the gifts of the rostra. His voice was 
thin, with a tendency to huskiness after long speak- 
ing; contentious assertion was always distasteful to 
him; and far from enjoying the clash of forensic 
arms, he shrank by a native fastidiousness from 
even the disturbance of a private altercation. He 
seems also, in his later years at least, not to have 
had a very high opinion of lawyers. In a letter 
written from Monticello to his friend David Camp- 
bell, in 1810, he contrasts the satisfaction it must 
give a physician to look back at the lives he has 
saved with the lawyer's miserable recollection of 



EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 9 

the many who "by his dexterity have been cheated 
out of their rights and reduced to beggary." Cer- 
tainly not a very just comparison ! Ten years later, 
in his Memoir, he chides "the present Congress" 
for its garrulousness, but adds in extenuation: "How 
could it be otherwise in a body to which the people 
send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it 
is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk 
by the hour?" Still, even if Jefferson was not a 
very enthusiastic lawyer, his success as an attorney 
: was far above the average of his day. Henry S. 
Randall, his most painstaking and exhaustive biog- 
irapher, has compiled a table of his cases in the 
igeneral court during his seven years of practice. 
I They amount to about a thousand, and the average 
yearly income from them was not far from three 
ithousand dollars. 

In the midst of his law studies in Wythe's office 
* Jefferson came of age, and celebrated the event in 
(characteristic fashion by planting an avenue of trees 
jat Shadwell. He was now master of the estate, for 
Iby the laws of entail and primogeniture — laws which 
J lie himself abolished in the reform of the Virginia 
llaw code — the oldest son inherited the undivided 
{property. Jefferson was an ideal figure for a 
anded proprietor. He was passionately fond of 
30untry life, riding his beloved horses at early morn 
jver his broad acres, watching with perennial en- 
thusiasm the budding of the trees and the ripening 



10 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

of the vegetables, noting in his closely written ac- 
count-books every item of income and outgo. His 
native gifts of intellect and grace of manner, supple- 
mented by a remarkably fine education, made him 
a charming host; while his genuine humanitarian 
interest extended to the meanest slave on his estate. 
From the day of his majority to the day of his 
death, more than threescore years later, this tall, 
sandy-haired master, with eyes " flecked with hazel," 
was loved by his family, his friends, and his servants 
as few were loved even in Virginia, the land of loyal 
devotions. 

With his new manorial dignity Jefferson took up 
the duties of a country squire. He became a justice 
of the peace and a vestryman of the parish. He 
also initiated his lifelong crusade for the improve- 
ment of material conditions through applied science, 
by starting a petition to the legislature for making 
the Rivanna River a navigable highway for the 
commerce of Albemarle County. 

Just at the moment when Jefferson was coming 
into his inheritance the curtain rose on the prologue 
to the tragedy of the American Revolution. George 
Grenville was prime minister in a cabinet which 
Macaulay characterizes as the worst that had gov- 
erned England since the revolution of 1688. In 
March, 1764, Grenville began to put into operation 
a plan for the taxation of the American colonies, 
with the threefold object of increasing the British 



EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 11 

revenue to meet the large debt contracted in the 
French war, of restoring the vigor of the Navigation 
Acts, which bound the commerce of the colonies by- 
rules imposed by the British Parliament, and of 
raising money to defray the expenses of " defending, 
protecting, and securing the King's dominion in 
America/ ' "so happily enlarged" by the expulsion 
of the French from the St. Lawrence and Mississippi 
valleys. In addition to various tariff duties levied 
by the Act of April, 1764, the ministry announced its 
intention of imposing on the American colonies the 
next year an "internal tax," that is, a tax not on 
their foreign trade, which as an "imperial" matter 
the colonists had been willing, at least in theory, to 
concede, but a tax on their ordinary business trans- 
actions within the colonies themselves. All kinds of 
legal and public documents, including wills, deeds, 
mortgages, bills of sale, promissory notes, contracts, 
as well as pamphlets, newspapers, almanacs, and 
playing-cards, were to be subject to stamp-duties 
ranging from three pence to ten pounds. 

King George approved the vigorous policy of his 
new ministers. In proroguing Parliament on the 
19th of April — a day made memorable on Lexington 
Green and at Concord Bridge eleven years later by- 
certain events not unconnected with the stamp-tax 
— George III complimented his ministers on "the 
wise regulations" which they had adopted "to aug- 
ment the public revenues and unite the interests of 



12 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

the most distant possessions of the crown." While 
the King was speaking Thomas Jefferson was per- 
haps musingly inspecting the condition of his newly- 
planted shade-trees at Shadwell. 

The next spring the Stamp Act was passed through 
Parliament, with scarcely any debate in the House 
of Commons and without a division in the Lords. 
News of the act reached America in May, as the 
session of the Virginia Burgesses was nearing its 
close. The representatives of the old conservative 
families, the Pendletons, Wythes, Blands, and Ran- 
dolphs, with all the "cyphers of aristocracy/ ' as 
Jefferson later called them, were willing to dissolve 
without a protest. There was something sacred 
and inviolate to them in an act of Parliament. But 
Patrick Henry, delegate from the upland county of 
Louisa, spoke out. He offered resolutions condemn- 
ing the Stamp Act, declaring that the right of taxing 
the colonies lay in their own legislative assemblies, 
and that any attempt of the British Parliament to 
usurp this right tended to the destruction of liber- 
ties both here and in England. He supported his 
resolutions in a fiery speech which drew cries of 
" Treason ! " from the consternated aristocrats. And 
he carried his point by a single vote. 

Thomas Jefferson was standing in the lobby at 
the door of the hall of the burgesses when Henry 
made his speech, and was still under the spell of 
that Homeric eloquence when his kinsman, Peyton 



EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 13 

Randolph, attorney-general of the colony, came 
storming out of the door with a vow that he would 
have given a hundred guineas for the one vote 
needed to kill the resolutions. It was a red-letter 
day in Jefferson's life — one of those rare moments 
whose influence lasts to the grave. Forty-five years 
later Jefferson wrote to his friend William Wirt, 
who was preparing a biography of Patrick Henry: 
"By those resolutions Mr. Henry took the lead out 
of the hands of those who had heretofore guided 
the proceedings of the House. . . . Subsequent 
events favored the policy of the bolder spirits . . . 
with whom I went on all points." 

Four years later Jefferson was elected to the 
House of Burgesses from Albemarle County. Much 
water had flowed under the political bridges mean- 
while. The British Parliament had repealed the 
Stamp Act in 1766, but, under the spur of Charles 
Townshend's mocking provocation, had returned to 
the charge the next year and imposed a fresh set of 
duties on colonial imports, together with a declara- 
tion of the legality of writs of assistance, and a 
general tightening up of the customs control. Mas- 
sachusetts had protested in a circular letter to the 
colonies, drawn up by Samuel Adams, and Lord 
Hillsborough had ordered the unruly legislature of 
Massachusetts, through Governor 'Bernard, to re- 
scind the letter. The legislature refused to obey by 
a vote of ninety-two to seventeen, and was dissolved 



14 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

by the governor. Two regiments of redcoats were 
brought from Halifax and quartered in Boston 
(1768). A few months later (May, 1769) the bur- 
gesses of Virginia were convened to meet their newly 
appointed governor, Lord Botetourt; but their 
reply to his inaugural speech was ominous. The 
"bolder spirits " were in control. They reasserted 
their determination to levy their own taxes, pro- 
tested against the removal to England for trial of 
persons accused of treason in the colonies, and, 
with unmistakable indorsement of the behavior of 
the Massachusetts Legislature, declared the right of 
the colonies to make their petitions for redress of 
grievances an affair of common colonial action. 
Jefferson was on the connnittee to prepare the ad- 
dress in reply to the governor's speech, and at the 
request of his colleagues he drew up a paper. But 
it was not considered "sufficiently amplified" (which 
probably meant "sufficiently vague") by the more 
conservative members, and Colonel Nicholas pre- 
pared one in its place. Jefferson was somewhat 
chagrined by the incident. "Being a young man 
as well as a new member," he wrote many years 
later, "it made on me an impression proportioned 
to the sensibility of that time of life." 

Lord Botetourt dissolved the burgesses after a 
session of five days, but the members reconvened in- 
formally in the Apollo Room of the Raleigh Tavern 
and had out their say. They passed resolutions 



EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 15 

boycotting the articles which were subject to the 
Townshend duties, and discouraged British impor- 
tations generally. They even agreed to keep their 
lambs alive for shearing; they would walk in home- 
spun rather than in slavery. Jefferson was one of 
the most enthusiastic advocates of these measures, 
which were signed by George Washington, Patrick 
Henry, Peyton Randolph (now converted), and 
about eighty other members of the legislature, every 
one of whom received the indorsement of re-election 
by his constituents. Two or three years of com- 
parative quiet in the rising dispute with the mother 
country followed the appointment of Lord North 
as prime minister in 1770, a period in which, as Jef- 
ferson complained, "our countrymen seemed to fall 
into a state of insensibility to our situation." 

But if politics were dull there was plenty of ex- 
citement in Jefferson's private life during these 
years. The paternal home at Shadwell was burned 
to the ground in the midwintei of 1770, and nothing 
saved but Jefferson's favorite fiddle. The disaster 
hastened the building of the new mansion which 
Jefferson had already begun on the favorite hilltop, 
where he used to sit and read and dream as a boy. 
He called it Monticello, the "little mountain," and 
the house he built on it, wholly from his own plans 
and partly with his own hands, is one of the treasures 
of our colonial architecture. Only a single pavilion 
of the mansion was finished, with three or four 



16 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

small chambers above, when Jefferson brought his 
bride to Monticello, through a heavy snow, on New 
Year's night of 1772. She was Martha Skelton, a 
widow of twenty-three, and daughter of a prosper- 
ous lawyer and proprietor, John Wayles. Her 
father died the year after the wedding, leaving her 
property in land (somewhat encumbered by debt) 
and slaves that was about equal to Jefferson's own 
estate. Mrs. Jefferson was extraordinarily endowed 
with both charm and sense, though her physical 
strength began to fail soon after her marriage. Her 
death in 1782 broke a perfect union of ten years. 
She left no sons to continue the name of Jefferson, 
and of her five daughters only two grew beyond 
babyhood. These two — Martha (Randolph) and 
Maria (Eppes), were their father's constant solace 
and joy. He never married again. 

The " insensibility " into which Jefferson feared 
his country had fallen in 1770 was roused to protest 
in the spring session of the burgesses in 1773, and 
again the cause was news from New England. The 
British schooner Gaspee, of eight guns, while chasing 
smugglers in Narragansett Bay, had run aground on 
a mud-bank about seven miles from Providence, on 
the afternoon of June 9, 1772. Late that night the 
stranded schooner was surrounded by boat-loads 
of armed citizens of Providence, who easily over- 
powered the drowsy crew and burned the Gaspee to 
the water's edge. England's retaliation was an act 



EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 17 

of Parliament "for the better securing and preserv- 
ing His Majesty's dockyards, magazines, ships, am- 
munition, and stores/' which threatened with the 
penalty of death any one who should destroy the 
least part of His Majesty's naval equipment, even 
to a brass button on an officer's coat, and gave the 
court of inquiry in Rhode Island the power to send 
the accused to England for trial. 

Indignant at this monstrous disproportion be- 
tween the punishment and the crime, the "bolder 
spirits" among the burgesses, Patrick Henry, the 
Lees, Jefferson, and his brilliant brother-in-law, 
Dabney Carr, held a private evening meeting at the 
Raleigh Tavern and prepared resolutions censuring 
the retaliatory act against Rhode Island, and calling 
for the establishment of a standing committee of 
correspondence and inquiry, whose business it should 
be to keep informed of important matters going on 
in all the American colonies and of the measures 
taken by Parliament for their regulation. The reso- 
lutions were adopted unanimously on March 12, 
1773, and a committee of eight, including Jefferson 
and Carr, was appointed. Governor Dunmore, like 
Governor Botetourt before him, dissolved the house. 
But the committee met in the famous Apollo Room 
the next day and sent their resolutions out to the 
sister colonies, with the invitation to each to ap- 
point a similar committee to correspond "on any 
measures or rumors of proceedings tending to de- 



18 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

prive them of their ancient, legal, and constitutional 
rights." 

Still a third time New England provoked the 
British Parliament to punitive measures, and a 
third time Virginia stood by the northern colonies. 
The English Government, "blundering into a policy 
one day and backing out of it the next, seeking fresh 
principles of action with every fresh mail from 
America," as Edmund Burke tauntingly put it, had 
repealed the Townshend duties, leaving only the 
trifling tax of threepence a pound on tea to maintain 
the principle of Parliament's right to tax the colo- 
nies' trade. In 1773 the British East India Com- 
pany, in financial straits, and with a glut of millions 
of pounds of unsold tea in its English warehouses, 
applied to the government for relief. Here was a 
rare opportunity for George III to accomplish two 
desirable objects by a single stroke. By remitting 
the shilling duty payable in England he could allow 
the East India corporation to dispose of its tea in 
America at a lower price, even including the three- 
penny tax, than the colonists had to pay for their 
smuggled cargoes from European ports; and at the 
same time he could tempt the Americans to take 
the tea at the good bargain offered and, by paying 
the duty, indorse the principle, so dear to his heart, 
of Parliament's right to tax them. 1 

1 Figures from the office of the inspector of imports and exports 
show that the importation of tea from English ports into the Ameri- 



EQUIPMENT. AND APPRENTICESHIP 19 

So the late autumn of 1773 saw several ship-loads 
of the East India Company's tea on the way to 
American ports. But the clever trick did not work. 
The people of Charleston got the consignees of the 
cargo destined for that port to resign, and eventually 
sold the tea at auction for the benefit of the revo- 
lutionary government. Public opinion in Philadel- 
phia and New York prevailed with the consignees 
and customs officers to send the tea ships back to 
England without unloading. But in Boston, where 
the consignees would not resign, nor the customs 
officers give clearance papers for a return voyage 
without unloading, nor the governor sign a pass per- 
mitting the ships to sail without clearance papers, 
there seemed but one way left to prevent the tea 
from being landed and the duties paid. On the 
night of December 16, 1773, a group of citizens 
dressed like Indians boarded the ships at Long 
Wharf, and ripping open the chests with their toma- 
hawks dumped the tea into Boston harbor. 

The punishment which Parliament meted out for 
this defiance of royal authority and wanton destruc- 
tion of property was swift and sure. The whole 

can colonies had fallen off from 877,193 pounds, paying a duty of 
£9,723, in 1768-9, to 237,062 pounds, paying a duty of only £1,677, 
in 1772-3. Yet no one could believe that the Americans were drink- 
ing only one-quarter as much tea in the latter as in the former year. 
The King believed, with apparent good reason, that the virtual 
monopoly which he granted the East India Company would put an 
end to smuggling and restore the British tea trade to its normal 
figures. 



THOMAS JbFFERSON 

province was chastised for the act of a few score 
iien. The charter was revised in such a way as to 
;hrow almost despotic power into the hands of the 
-oval governor; town meetings, those nurseries of 
ndependence, were forbidden, except for the annual 
election of officers; public buildings were designated 
as barracks for the King's troops; and the port of 
Boston was closed by British war-ships, except for 
: 'fuel or victual ... for the necessary use and sus- 
tenance of the inhabitants of the said town," from 
Tune 1, 1774, until the tea should be paid for. 

When the news of the punishment of Boston 
•eached the Virginia Burgesses in their spring ses- 
ion of 1774, the same group of " bolder spirits" who 
lad taken the lead from the older members in 1769, 
agreeing with Jefferson that they "must take an un- 
quivocal stand in the line with Massachusetts," 
oted a resolution to observe the 1st of June as a 
Jay of fasting, humiliation, and prayer, "to implore 
• \eaven to avert from us the evils of civil war, to in- 
^pire us with firmness in support of our rights, and 
lo turn the hearts of the King and Parliament to 
moderation and justice." The reply to such inso- 
lence could not be in doubt. "The governor dis- 
solved us as usual," is Jefferson's laconic comment, 
and, as usual, again the members "retired to the 
Apollo," where they adopted resolutions boycotting 
British goods, declaring that an attack on one colony 
\ /as an attack on all, and instructing their committee 



EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 21 

of correspondence to sound the other colonies on the 
advisability of general annual congresses, the first 
to be held at Philadelphia in the following Septem- 
ber. They further agreed that a convention should 
meet at Williamsburg on August 1 to appoint dele- 
gates to the Philadelphia Congress if the colonies re- 
ported favorably on the plan. 

Albemarle County designated its newly elected 
burgesses, Jefferson and Walker, as delegates to the 
convention at Williamsburg. Their instructions, 
drawn up by Jefferson himself, contained resolutions 
asserting that the natural and legal rights of the 
colonists had been invaded by Parliament in fre- 
quent instances, and pledging the co-operation of the 
Virginians "with their fellow-subjects in every part 
of the Empire for the reestablishment and guaran- 
teeing such their constitutional rights, when, where, 
and by whomsoever invaded." These instructions, 
more radical than those of any other county, 1 more 
defiant even than the Stamp Act resolutions of Pat- 
rick Henry, were only the text of a most remarkable 

1 The resolutions of the Fairfax County meeting, for example, over 
which George Washington presided, acknowledged Parliament's 
power, "directed with wisdom and moderation," to regulate Ameri- 
can trade and commerce. All the Virginia patriots, except George 
Wythe, says Jefferson in his Memoir, "stopped at the half-way house 
of John Dickinson, who admitted that England had a right to regu- 
late our commerce, and to lay duties on it for the purpose of regula- 
tion, but not of raising revenue." Jefferson took the ground from 
the beginning that our connection with England was simply the per- 
sonal union of the American and British parts of the Empire under 
the same sovereign. 



22 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

document which Jefferson prepared in the summer 
of 1774, to serve as instructions for the delegates 
from Virginia to the general Continental Congress 
at Philadelphia. 

Jefferson was taken ill on the way to Williams- 
burg and obliged to return to Monticello. But he 
sent on two copies of his paper, one to Patrick Henry, 
the other to Peyton Randolph, who he was sure 
would be chosen chairman of the convention. Ran- 
dolph placed his copy on the table for the members' 
perusal. They thought it "too bold for the present 
state of things," and in its place drew up a briefer 
and milder set of instructions, in which they de- 
clared their "faith and true allegiance to His Maj- 
esty, King George the Third, our lawful and rightful 
sovereign," and their ardent wish for the return of 
the affection and commercial ties which formerly 
united both countries; protesting only against some 
specific abuses (notably Governor Gage's conduct in 
Massachusetts), without whose redress America 
could "neither be safe nor free nor happy." 

The paper which Jefferson's colleagues generally 
thought "too bold for the present state of things," 
was nevertheless printed by some of the author's 
friends under the title, A Summary View of the 
Rights of British America. This celebrated pam- 
phlet opens the list of American polemic and apolo- 
getic papers on the Revolution which Englishmen 
like Burke, Pitt, and Conway declared were unsur- 



EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 23 

passed in the literature of political argumentation. 
It was the boldest declaration of American rights — 
almost a declaration of independence. It denied 
in toto the supremacy of Parliament over the colo- 
nies, asking by what right one hundred and sixty 
thousand electors in the island of Great Britain pre- 
tended to give laws to four million in the states 
(note the word !) of America. When the colonists 
left England, Jefferson maintained, they carried 
their liberties with them and escaped the control of 
their fellow Britons left behind as completely as 
their common ancestors who came over from Saxony 
escaped the rule of their German kinsfolk. Every 
act of Parliament touching the manufactures and 
trade of the Americans had been a usurpation and 
a wanton assault "upon the rights which God and 
the laws have given equally and independently to 
us all." The rapid succession of such acts during 
the reign of George III "pursued unalterably through 
every change of ministers, too plainly prove a de- 
liberate and systematical plan of reducing us to 
slavery." 

Jefferson reviews these acts: the revenue mea- 
sures, the suspension of colonial legislatures, the 
punishment of Boston. He examines the conduct 
of George III : the vetoes on colonial laws, the arbi- 
trary instructions to colonial governors, the exercise 
of feudal privileges over the soil, the landing of 
troops on our shores, the subordination of the civil 



24 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

to the military power. He entreats the King, as 
"the only mediatory power between the several 
states of the British Empire/ ' to recommend to Par- 
liament the total revocation of its offensive acts, 
and himself to cease to sacrifice the rights of one 
part of the empire to the inordinate desires of an- 
other. The language of the address from beginning 
to end is that of freemen claiming their rights, not 
suppliants asking a boon. The customary bending 
of the knee and lavishing of obsequious adjectives 
are wanting. Instead, there is protest, remon- 
strance, defiance, warning, and even exhortation. 
The young lawyer of Albemarle County dares to 
sermonize the ruler of the British Empire: "Open 
your breast, sire, to liberal and expanded thought. 
Let not the name of George the Third be a blot on 
the page of history. The whole art of government 
consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do 
your duty, and mankind will give you credit where 
you fail." Intolerable insolence ! 

With the publication of the Summary View in 
1774, as the delegates of the colonies were gathering 
in Philadelphia, the period of Jefferson's apprentice- 
ship comes to a close. The crisis in his country's 
life was a milestone in his own. He had reached 
his political majority. Up to now he had served on 
committees, drawn up resolutions, signed remon- 
strances with his colleagues at the Raleigh Tavern, 
returning to his law practice or to his farms at Mon- 



EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 25 

ticello. But from now on he became altogether a 
public servant. His law office was closed and the 
good-will and the clients turned over to his distant 
cousin, Edmund Randolph. And though he was to 
protest till the day of his release from the presi- 
dency, thirty-five years later, that he would have 
laid down high office any moment for the joy of 
returning to his estate, the call of his country and 
the response of his own lofty sense of responsibility 
to his country's service kept him almost a stranger 
to Monticello until he returned at last, ripe with age 
and honors, to spend his declining years amid the 
dream scenes of his youth. 



CHAPTER II 
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

By the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a con- 
nection on such terms as the British Parliament propose. (Jefferson 
to John Randolph, November 29, 1775.) 

When unauthorized bodies meet to review and re- 
dress the policies of absolute kings, revolution has 
begun: witness the Convention Parliament and the 
Tennis Court Oath. Such a body were the sixty 
delegates of what Jefferson called "the American 
States of the British Empire/ ' who met on Septem- 
ber 5, 1774, in the Carpenters' Hall of Philadelphia. 
" Certain persons/' the lord governor of Virginia 
called them, "who have presumed without his 
Majesty's authority or consent to assemble to- 
gether." Their arrival was scarcely noticed by the 
Philadelphia newspapers, their session lasted only 
fifty-two days, and their measures were mild — for 
the majority of the delegates were still conservative. 
They sent a respectful petition to the King for a 
redress of grievances, not differing much in tone 
from that sent by the Stamp Act Congress nine 
years earlier, and adopted an "association" or non- 
importation agreement to be binding on all the colo- 
nies. Their significance was rather in the meeting 

26 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 27 

itself than in its resolutions. They were for the 
first time expressing the will of the united colonies. 
Jefferson was not a member of the first Conti- 
nental Congress, but he came to the forefront in the 
revolutionary politics of Virginia. On New Year's 
day, 1775, he was elected chairman of the Commit- 
tee of Public Safety of Albemarle County, 1 and the 
following March was sent as delegate to the second 
Virginia convention, which met, not at Williams- 
burg, within reach of the King's war-ships, but at the 
little village of Richmond up the river. Here again 
the irresistible torrent of Patrick Henry's eloquence 
swept the assembly on to revolution. "We must 
fight !" he cried. "The next gale that sweeps from 
the North will bring to our ears the clash of resound- 
ing arms. Our brethren are already in the field. 
Why stand we here idle ? Is life so dear or peace so 
sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and 
slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not 
what course others may take; but as for me, give me 
liberty or give me death !" The motion to arm the 
colony was carried, and Jefferson was placed, with 
Henry, Lee, Washington, and nine others, on a com- 
mittee to prepare a plan of defense. Before ad- 

1 " The powers of these committees were almost unlimited. They 
inspected the books of merchants to see if they imported prohibited 
articles, or sold at exorbitant prices. They examined all suspected 
persons, disarmed, fined, or imprisoned them, and from their deci- 
sions there was no appeal. They even enlisted, trained, armed, and 
officered independent companies and minute-men in each county," 
says Girardin in his History of Virginia. 



28 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

journing, the convention re-elected its seven dele- 
gates of 1774 to the new session of the Continental 
Congress, to be held in Philadelphia on May 10, 
adding the name of Thomas Jefferson to replace 
Peyton Randolph, in case the latter should be re- 
called to preside over the Virginia House of Bur- 
gesses. 

Soon after the opening of the Congress, the King's 
governors in America received a conciliatory pro- 
posal from Lord North, to the effect that any colony 
agreeing to raise the sum assessed by Parliament 
and to leave the spending of the money to royal 
authority, should be free to levy the tax in its own 
way. Much as he hated and feared to call together 
the House of Burgesses, which he had twice sum- 
marily dissolved, and some of whose members (Ran- 
dolph, Henry, Jefferson) he was even thinking of 
prosecuting for treason, Governor Dunmore was per- 
suaded by his Council that there wa's no other way 
of getting Lord North's proposal before the colony 
or of preserving his own remnant of authority. Ac- 
cordingly, the burgesses were convened the 1st of 
June, 1775, some of them coming down from the 
upper counties in hunting-shirts with their rifles 
slung across their shoulders. Governor Dunmore 
did not wait to hear their answer to Lord North's 
proposals. The wounding of two young men who 
had entered the magazine to secure arms, by spring- 
guns trained on the doors, raised such a storm 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 29 

again?! the "murderous governor" in Williamsburg 
that Lord Dunmore thought it wise to slip away 
from his capital and take refuge on the deck of the 
war-ship (June 8). It was the end of the rule of 
George IIFs servants in Virginia. 

The summons of the House of Burgesses recalled 
Peyton Randolph from the Congress at Philadelphia, 
leaving the vacancy which Jefferson had been chosen 
to fill. Randolph asked Jefferson to remain at Wil- 
liamsburg, however, long enough to prepare the 
answer of the burgesses to Lord North. The paper 
which Jefferson drew up, and which was adopted on 
June 10, was a respectful but firm rejection of the 
terms offered. They only " changed the form of 
oppression without lightening its burdens." The 
colony could not agree to saddle itself with a per- 
petual tax, whose amount was to be determined by 
the British Parliament. Besides, Lord North left 
all the other grievances of the colonies unredressed : 
the laws against their trade, the interference with 
their legislatures, the reconstruction of their courts, 
the suppression of trial by jury, the introduction of 
standing armies. Finally, it was too late to appeal 
to the separate colonies with offers of conciliation. 
Virginia was committed to the common cause, and 
her delegates were sitting in the general Congress, 
before which his lordship's papers should be laid 
for common deliberation. "We consider ourselves 
as bound in honor, as well as interest, to share one 



30 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

general fate with our sister colonies, and should hold 
ourselves base deserters of that union to which we 
have acceded, were we to agree on any measures 
distinct and separate from them." In other words, 
it was to Philadelphia and not to Westminster that 
the Americans now looked for their authority. 

The day after his reply to Lord North was ac- 
cepted by the burgesses, Jefferson set out by car- 
riage for Philadelphia, taking a copy of the reply in 
his pocket. 1 He could make only about twenty 
miles a day over the poor roads and across the slow 
ferries. There were eight unbridged rivers to cross 
in his journey of two hundred and fifty miles. He 
arrived on June 20, just in time to see George Wash- 
ington set out for Cambridge to take command of 
the American army of sixteen thousand New Eng- 
land farmers. Although he was but thirty-two years 
of age — the youngest man in Congress, with the ex- 
ception of Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, and 
John Jay of New York — Jefferson was already 
known to the leading men of Philadelphia. a He 
brought with him," wrote John Adams, "a reputa- 
tion for literary science and a happy talent of com- 
position. Writings of his [the Summary View and 
the Reply to Lord North] were handed about, re- 

1 Jefferson says in his Memoir that he "conveyed to Congress the 
first notice they had of it." But here, as in many minor points in 
the Memoir, memory played the old man of seventy-seven false. 
New Jersey had laid the proposal of North before the Congress on 
May 20. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 31 

markable for their peculiar felicity of expression." 
Jefferson had no talent for public debate, but in 
consultation and committee work his opinion was 
" prompt, frank, explicit, and decisive," says John 
Adams in the same letter. He was a welcome ac- 
cession to the radical cause in Congress, especially 
as he had the learning and the art to write a power- 
ful apology for that cause. Our affairs were, as the 
writers of the time phrased it, "in a delicate pos- 
ture." War had actually begun, yet we were still 
protesting our loyalty and sending our petitions to 
George III; united action was the only hope for our 
cause, and yet further measures of violence might 
drive the hesitating into the arms of England; and 
in England itself we had to convince the Tories 
of our candor and the Whigs of our courage. 

It was not long before the masterly pen of Jeffer- 
son was called into requisition. News of the ter- 
rible slaughter of Bunker Hill reached Congress. 
Lexington and Concord might be explained away as 
skirmishes, but here was war in grim array, serried 
ranks of redcoats marching up the hill again and 
again to silence the murderous fire from the Ameri- 
can ramparts. Congress hastened to appoint a 
committee to explain and justify the colonists' resort 
to arms, in a " declaration to be published by Gen- 
eral Washington upon his arrival at the camp before 
Boston. ' ' John Rutledge's report was unsatisfactory 
to Congress, and John Dickinson and Thomas Jef- 



32 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ferson were added to the committee. "I prepared 
a draft/' says Jefferson in his Memoir, "of the Dec- 
laration committed to us. It was too strong for 
Mr. Dickinson. . . . We therefore requested him 
to take the paper and put it into a form that he 
could approve. He did so, preparing an entire new 
statement, and preserving of the former only the 
last four paragraphs and half the preceding one. 
We approved and reported it to Congress, who 
accepted it." 

Now the last four and a half paragraphs of this 
famous Declaration on the Colonists Taking up Arms 
are worth all the rest of the paper. They are ner- 
vous, forceful, and thoroughly radical. It is from 
them that the epigrammatic phrases are often 
quoted: "Our cause is just, our union is perfect," 
"resolved rather to die free than live slaves," "we 
fight not for glory or conquest," "against violence 
actually offered we have taken up arms, we shall 
lay them down when hostilities cease on the part of 
the aggressor." It was these sentiments that were 
received with "thundering huzzas" by the soldiers 
encamped around Boston. They are sentiments we 
should expect from Jefferson, but not at all from 
the conservative John Dickinson. Yet, in spite of 
their Jeffersonian style, our documentary evidence 
seems to prove that they were written by Dickinson. 
The manuscript of Jefferson's rejected draft of the 
Declaration is among the original Jefferson papers in 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 33 

the Department of State at Washington. In 1882 
Doctor George H. Moore, of the New York Histori- 
cal Society, found among its papers a draft of the 
entire Declaration, with corrections and interlinings, 
in the handwriting of John Dickinson. A compari- 
son of these two documents shows that Dickinson 
embodied several of Jefferson's ideas and even kept 
some of his phrases (as he would naturally do, being 
asked to " amend" Jefferson's draft). But there is 
no more, or very little more, of Jefferson's draft in 
the last four and a half paragraphs than in the rest 
of the paper. We are at a loss to explain Jefferson's 
explicit statement in the Memoir. 1 

On the day before Congress adjourned (July 31, 
1775) it adopted a reply to Lord North's conciliatory 
resolution. Jefferson, having written the reply of 
the Virginia Burgesses, which was approved by 
Congress, was asked to draft the paper. It em- 

1 Still we object to the tone of censorious hostility to Jefferson in 
the address of Doctor Moore, as printed in Stille's Life and Times 
of John Dickinson: "If any man can discover any good, honest 
reason why Mr. Jefferson wrote such a story [of the last four and 
a half paragraphs] in his Autobiography, he will render a seasonable 
and important service to the much exalted reputation of the author." 
(P. 361.) The innuendo and the sneer are both undeserved. No 
one believes that Thomas Jefferson deliberately lied. There may 
have been consultations and tentative drafts in which both Jefferson 
and Dickinson had a part, leaving on the former the distinct impres- 
sion that the closing paragraphs were his suggestion primarily. At 
any rate, Doctor Moore goes beyond the warrant of the evidence 
when he asserts in italics that the draft in Dickinson's handwriting 

proves that the author of any part was the author of every part, and that 
there was but one hand in the work, and that the hand of John Dickin- 
son." It proves no such thing, as every historical student knows. 



34 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

bodied ; "in statelier form/' the resolutions of the 
Virginia House which we have already analyzed. 
On the adjournment of Congress till the fifth of the 
following September, Jefferson returned with Henry, 
Harrison, and Lee to the Virginia Convention at 
Richmond. He remained here only ten days, but 
before he returned to Monticello he had the satis- 
faction of being re-elected to Congress by a very 
large majority, and of seeing the first breach made 
in the exclusive privilege of the Anglican establish- 
ment in Virginia. Baptist and Congregationalist 
patriots, with the reverend John Clay, father of the 
great Henry, among their leaders, secured the pas- 
sage of a resolution by the convention allowing the 
dissenting ministers to preach in camp, "for the 
ease of such consciences as may not chuse to attend 
divine service as celebrated by the chaplain." We 
shall see in later pages with what zeal Jefferson 
threw himself into the struggle for complete religious 
freedom in Virginia. 

While Peyton Randolph was being returned to 
Congress at the head of the poll, his brother John 
was making his preparations to emigrate to England, 
for he adhered to the royal cause. Jefferson wrote 
him a letter from Monticello in August, 1775, beg- 
ging him to make the true sentiments of the Ameri- 
cans understood in England. It is one of the most 
valuable letters we have from Jefferson's pen, de- 
scribing both his own and his countrymen's feelings 






DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 35 

at a most critical moment in our history. He voices 
the hope that "the returning wisdom of Great Brit- 
ain will ere long put an end to this unnatural con- 
test." He professes the sincere preference "to be 
in dependence on Great Britain, properly limited, 
than on any other nation upon earth or than on no 
nation." He fears that the King's ministers have 
been deceived by their officials on this side of the 
water, who represent the American opposition as a 
small faction, and as cowards who will surrender at 
discretion to a small force. He insists that the 
Americans are in earnest, and that "no partial con- 
cessions of right will be accepted." He warns the 
men who are directing the policy of the British Em- 
pire that it is "the most dritical time certainly that 
it has ever seen," a crisis which will determine 
"whether Britain shall continue the head of the 
greatest empire on earth, or shall return to her origi- 
nal station in the political scale of Europe." And 
he adjures the ministry not "to trifle with accom- 
modation till it shall be out of their power forever 
to accommodate." There is little probability that 
John Randolph urged these "instructions" on the 
British ministry, but the writing of them in the 
quiet of Monticello, after the stirring scenes of the 
summer, must have been a kind of mental stock- 
taking for Jefferson, still further clarifying his ideas 
and fortifying his convictions on the rights of 
"British America." y 



36 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Jefferson returned to Congress late in September 
with a heavy heart. His second child, Jane, had 
just died at the age of eighteen months, his mother 
was failing fast, and his wife's health was very poor. 
He was sorely needed at Monticello for comfort, 
protection, and support. Lord Dunmore was en- 
gaged in the dastardly policy of revenge by inciting 
the slaves to revolt and offering them arms. Al- 
though the merest handful replied to his solicitation, 
the anxiety on the farms and plantations of Virginia 
was great; for the slightest rumor of a slave insur- 
rection always caused a panic in the Old Dominion. 
Jefferson had over eighty slaves at Monticello, and 
a " family" of thirty-four whites. There was no 
man capable of caring properly for the estate 
but himself. His letters from Philadelphia to his 
brother-in-law, Francis Eppes, betray his anxiety. 
On November 7 he writes that he has not heard a 
word from any mortal in Virginia during the seven 
weeks since he left home: "The suspense under 
which I am is too terrible to be endured; if any- 
thing has happened, for God's sake let me know it." 
Finally, toward the close of December, he left Phila- 
delphia, the rules requiring only that a majority of 
the delegation from the State be present at Con- 
gress. The next four and a half months he spent at 
Monticello. 

The irony of our protestations of allegiance to 
Great Britain and the futility of any hopes for a 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 37 

reconciliation with Parliament were becoming more 
patent with every month that passed. The King 
refused to receive the "olive branch petition" which 
Dickinson, Jay, and Wilson had persuaded Congress 
to send in July, 1775, as a last appeal to "his most 
gracious Majesty." Instead, he had declared the 
American colonies to be in a state of rebellion and 
sedition. 1 He prohibited all trade and intercourse 
with them, bombarded and burned their towns 
(Falmouth and Norfolk), and hired German mer- 
cenaries to reduce them to obedience. In Novem- 
ber, 1775, Parliament, by a vote of 83 to 33 in the 
Lords and 210 to 105 in the Commons, rejected mo- 
tions for conciliation. On this side of the water 
there was no less determination. Congress main- 
tained an army in active opposition to the royal 
governor of Massachusetts, made war contracts, 
granted military commissions, appointed a diplo- 
matic committee to sound the courts of Europe for 
aid, and recommended to the patriots of New Hamp- 
shire, South Carolina, and Virginia to follow the 
lead of Massachusetts in establishing such forms of 

1 When Benjamin Franklin returned to America in March, 1775, 
after ten years' official residence in London as "agent" of several 
colonies, he told the Americans how their petitions to the King were 
treated: "Transmitted to Parliament with a great heap of letters, 
newspapers, handbills, etc., and laid on the table undistinguished 
by any recommendation and unnoticed in the royal speech." In 
spite of Franklin's report, Congress addressed the throne in most 
obsequious language in its petition of July 8, 1775, two days after 
the Declaration on the Colonists Taking up Arms. John Dickinson 
was the author of both papers ! 



38 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

government as, in their judgment, would "best pro- 
duce the happiness of the people and most effectually 
secure peace and good order during the continuance 
of the present dispute between Great Britain and the 
colonies." It is difficult to see what further act of 
sovereignty the colonists could perform. The in- 
consistency of such behavior with professions of 
loyalty to the crown was convincingly shown by 
Thomas Paine in his famous pamphlet, Common 
Sense (January, 1776), which urged the colonies to 
drop their sentimental attachment to a stupid King 
and a servile Parliament, and to wake to their pro- 
phetic mission as founders of a new nation destined 
to be vast and populous, an example of freedom 
and democracy to the whole world. 

Thomas Paine's pamphlet was running into the 
tens of thousands, its "sound doctrine and unan- 
swerable reasoning' ' (the words are Washington's), 
stirring a new spirit of independence throughout the 
land, when Thomas Jefferson went up in May, 1776, 
to resume his seat in Congress. Already the ties 
which bound the colonies to England were snapping. 
The local committees of safety had virtually suc- 
ceeded the King's officials in New England and the 
colonies south of the Potomac. Only the middle 
group — New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and 
Maryland — held firm in their allegiance, instructing 
their delegates in Congress as late as January, 1776, 
to resist any proposition for a separation from 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 39 

Great Britain. On April 12 the convention of 
North Carolina authorized its delegates "to concur 
with the delegates of other colonies in declaring in- 
dependency"; and a month later the Virginia Con- 
vention took the decisive step of instructing its dele- 
gates in Congress "to propose to that respectable 
body to declare the united colonies free and inde- 
pendent States, absolved from all allegiance to or 
dependence upon the Crown or Parliament of Great 
Britain." Mr. H. S. Randall, in his elaborate biog- 
raphy of Jefferson, thinks it likely that this momen- 
tous resolution of the convention of Virginia was 
connected with Jefferson's vacation from Congress, 
and he urges, among other reasons for his belief, 
that Jefferson's election to the first place on the 
committee chosen June 10 to draft a declaration of 
independence would scarcely be the reward be- 
stowed on a prodigal returning after four and a half 
months of inglorious ease. At any rate, it is a 
pleasing surmise that the man who wrote the im- 
mortal document was influential in securing the in- 
troduction of the motion for independence, and 
there may have been more than a mere coincidence 
in the fact that appearance of the resolution in the 
Virginia Convention followed so hard upon the de- 
parture of Jefferson for Philadelphia. 1 

1 Mr. Randall might have added another weight to his scale of 
probabilities by quoting some of the abundant testimony of con- 
temporary Virginians to the part played by the piedmont counties 
(where, of course, Jefferson was most influential) in the campaign 



40 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Richard Henry Lee, in behalf of the Virginia del- 
egation, introduced the triple motion into Congress, 
June 7, 1776, declaring our independence, recom- 
mending the solicitation of aid from foreign Powers, 
and urging the formation of a confederation to 
bind the colonies more closely together. The first 
clause was debated fiercely. "The Congress sat 
till seven o'clock this evening," wrote Rutledge to 
Jay, "in consequence of a motion of R. H. Lee's ren- 
dering ourselves free and independent States: the 
sensible part of the House opposed the Motion . . . 
I wish you had been here. The whole argument 
was sustained on the one side by R. Livingston, 
Wilson, Dickinson, and myself, and by the Power 
of all New England, Virginia and Georgia at the 
other. " Jefferson produces a score or more of argu- 
ments on each side in brief synoptic paragraphs in 
his Memoir, and adds that since "the colonies of 
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, 
Maryland, and South Carolina were not yet ma- 
tured for falling off from the parent stem, but were 
fast advancing to that state, it was thought most 
prudent to wait a while for them and to postpone 
the decision. " At the same time a committee of 

for independence. Mason wrote to R. H. Lee that the resolution of 
May 15 in the convention "was carried by the western vote," i. e., 
by the members living north and west of Richmond; and Jefferson 
himself wrote from Philadelphia to Thomas Nelson, just after taking 
his seat: "When at home I took great pains to inquire into the sen- 
timents of the people on that head [independence]. In the upper 
counties I think I may say nine out of ten were for it." 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 41 

five was appointed to draw up a Declaration of In- 
dependence to be adopted in case the motion should 
pass. Thomas Jefferson was chosen first on the 
committee ; with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, 
Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston following 
in the order named. In response to the unanimous 
request of his colleagues, Jefferson undertook to 
draft the paper. 

To analyze the Declaration of Independence 
would be as gratuitous a piece of work as to analyze 
the Ten Commandments. It is the Bible of Ameri- 
can democracy. The equality of all men in the eyes 
of nature and the law, the inalienable rights of all 
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the func- 
tion of government as a guarantee of those rights, 
its just powers derived from the consent of the gov- 
erned — these are the political principles on which 
our republic is founded and from which it will draw 
its inspiration as long as it lives. Without them it 
would not be a republic; without them it would not 
be America. 

Congress handled Jefferson's draft rather roughly 
in its debate of July 2-4, and the author confesses 
himself that he writhed a little under the acrimoni- 
ous criticism of some of its parts. Very few addi- 
tions were made, and those only of a few words, but 
some passages were suppressed. In the long list of 
indictments against the tyrannical conduct of 
' George III, which comprise the body of the Declara- 



42 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

tion, Jefferson had included a rebuke of the King 
for his perpetuation of the American slave-trade. 
The section was stricken out. New England had 
hundreds of vessels engaged in the traffic, and the 
Southern planters had not kept pace with Jefferson 
in his emancipation sentiments. Another paragraph 
suppressed was the severe arraignment of the Eng- 
lish people as " unfeeling bretheren/' whose- support 
of a tyrannical government had " given the last stab 
to agonized affections and forced us to endeavor to 
forget our former love for them." The passage was 
melodramatic and inopportune. Our quarrel was 
with George III and his Parliament, not with the 
English people. A comparison of Jefferson's origi- 
nal draft with the Declaration as amended and 
adopted leaves no doubt that the pruning process, 
however painful to the sensitive author, was wise 
and wholesome. 

Jefferson states in that part of his Memoir which 
he claims was composed from notes taken at the 
time of the events that the Declaration was accepted 
by Congress on July 4, and "signed by every member 
present except Mr. Dickinson." But in this, as in 
many of the statements in the Memoir, he is mis- 
taken — unless we take refuge with his devoted biog- 
rapher, Mr. Randall, in the rather absurd supposi- 
tion that in July all the members but one signed a 
paper which (in spite of its immense importance) 
soon disappeared from view, while several weeks 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 43 

later considerable difficulty was experienced in get- 
ting them to sign the engrossed copy now preserved 
in the Department of State at Washington. Be- 
sides, Dickinson was not present in Congress on 
July 4, 1776. The wide-spread tradition of the sign- 
ing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 
with its attendant stories of Franklin's and Harri- 
son's facetiousness, is due to the following curious 
fact. The secretary, Charles Thompson, in making 
up his minutes for the session of July 4, left a blank 
space for the text of the Declaration. The space 
was filled later by pasting into it a copy of the Dec- 
laration, to which were appended the names of the 
signers as they appeared on the engrossed copy. 
August 2 was the date on which most of the mem- 
bers actually signed. The original Declaration as 
sent out by Congress bore only the name of the 
president, John Hancock, written in the bold letters 
"which George III could read without his specta- 
cles," and of the clerk, Charles Thompson. 1 

1 Some of the men whose names thus mistakenly appear as signers 
on July 4 were not present in Congress that day, and some were 
not even members of Congress then. The original Declaration, in 
the handwriting of Jefferson, as reported from the committee to 
Congress, is preserved with the Jefferson manuscripts in the De- 
partment of State. The engrossed copy, signed by the members, is 
also there, but since 1894 it has been kept from public view, in a steel 
case, to prevent further fading and cracking of the parchment. Jef- 
ferson made a number of copies of the Declaration in his own hand- 
writing for various friends. Two of these copies are now in Wash- 
ington, another was given by R. H. Lee to the American Philosophi- 
cal Society at Philadelphia, a fourth is in the Lenox Division of the 
Public Library of New York, a fifth in possession of the Massa- 



44 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Many years after the Declaration was written, 
when Jefferson and Adams had become estranged 
by bitter partisan strife, the Massachusetts patriot, 
both in his Autobiography and in his letters, sought 
to belittle Jefferson's merits. He declared that he 
and Jefferson were both appointed as a subcom- 
mittee to make the draft; that they each urged the 
other to write it; that he finally persuaded his 
younger colleague to do the work because he was 
not only a better writer but was a Virginian and a 
"less obnoxious and suspected" (" distinguished"?) 
person than himself; and that finally, after some 
strictures on the document which Jefferson pre- 
pared, he " consented to report it" to the committee. 
As to the Declaration itself, Adams wrote to Pick- 
ering in 1822: "As you justly observe, there is not 
an idea in it but what had been hackneyed in Con- 
gress for two years before. . . . Indeed, the essence 
of it is contained in a pamphlet, voted and printed 
by the town of Boston, before the first Congress met, 
composed by James Otis, as I suppose in one of his 
lucid intervals, and pruned and polished by Samuel 
Adams." 

Jefferson's reply to these ungracious remarks of 



chusetts Historical Society. Copies that we know from Jefferson's 
correspondence were given to Page, Pendleton, Wythe, and Mazzei 
have disappeared. A great number of facsimiles are in existence, 
two hundred having been made by order of Congress in 1824 and 
presented to the three surviving signers — Jefferson, Adams, and 
Charles Carroll of Carrollton. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 45 

the man who forty-six years earlier had stood by his 
side as "the Colossus of the Debate" on the adop- 
tion of the Declaration, is simply that the committee 
"unanimously pressed" him to write the draft, that 
he submitted it to Adams and Franklin for their 
corrections (which were trifling), that as to its 
merits he was not the judge. "Otis' pamphlet I 
never saw," he continues, "and whether I had 
gathered my ideas from reading or reflection I do 
not know. I only know that I turned to neither 
book nor pamphlet while writing it. I did not 
consider it as any part of my charge to invent new 
ideas altogether, and to offer no sentiments which 
had ever been expressed before." 

It is precisely the marvelous skill of Jefferson in 
focussing in sharp, distinct lines the wavering senti- 
ment of independence that makes his document so 
great. For us the Declaration of Independence is 
the birth certificate of the American nation; for the 
men of 1776 it was a proclamation, a bugle-call. It 
cleared the air. Men were no longer to wonder how 
they could "own the King and fight against him at 
the same time," as a Delaware patriot said. Hesi- 
tation was at an end. The Tories had been lagging 
brothers, fearful of treason to their King. The 
Declaration made them traitors to America. Cau- 
tion and calculation had postponed the fatal step 
of separation from Great Britain. The middle col- 
onies were lukewarm; decisive action might mean 



46 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

their secession. And the same rash step that pro- 
duced division at home would cement the union of 
Whigs and Tories in England. For the Whigs were 
our friends as long as we demanded reforms, but 
our enemies when we fell away from the empire. 
The same William Pitt who "rejoiced" that America 
had resisted the Stamp Act, declared a few years 
later that if he believed that the Americans enter- 
tained "the most distant intention of throwing off 
the legislative supremacy of Great Britain/ ' he 
would be the first to enforce British authority 
"by every exertion the country was capable of 
making." In the compelling faith of freedom the 
Declaration risked the double danger of a disunited 
America and a united England. And its faith was 
justified. 

Not all were won to the patriot cause. Careful 
students of the loyalist sentiment in the American 
Revolution believe that fully one-third of the popu- 
lation of the colonies held by the King. But the 
men who were waiting to have the issue clearly de- 
fined, the leaders who for a decade had felt the con- 
victions of their heart growing to belie the profes- 
sions of their lips, the soldiers who wanted to know 
finally for what they were fighting, hailed the Dec- 
laration with joy. It was read in courts and council 
halls, on public squares and village greens, from pul- 
pits and platforms. It was received with proces- 
sions, banquets, and salvos of cannon. In Phila- 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 47 

delphia the people tore down the "late King's" arms 
from the State House and burned them in a bonfire 
on Independence Square. In New York the troops 
and citizens together, after hearing the Declaration 
read, proceeded to Bowling Green and dragged 
down the leaden equestrian statue of George III, 
which was melted up into bullets for patriot rifles. 
The citizens of Savannah, after a day of feasting, 
burned George III in effigy and read a mock funeral 
service over his grave. Uncertainties, timidities, 
inconsistencies were removed. The issue was clearly 
defined and the battle fairly joined. On July 9 
George Washington published the Declaration to 
his army in New York with the following order: 
"The General hopes that this important event will 
serve as an incentive to every officer and soldier to 
act with fidelity and courage, as knowing now that 
the peace and safety of his country depend, under 
God, solely on the success of our arms." It is said 
that the Marseillaise was worth ten thousand men 
to the Jacobin generals of the French Revolution. 
Who shall say how many regiments the Declaration 
of Independence was worth to the great patriot who 
bore the burden of our tottering cause from Brooklyn 
Heights to Yorktown ! 

One other service of far-reaching importance the 
Declaration rendered to the American cause. It 
was a stroke of diplomacy. So long as we were fight- 
ing to reform the British Empire, the secret commit- 



48 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

tee on foreign correspondence appointed by Con- 
gress on November 29, 1775, could hardly expect 
any aid from European nations. But when the 
cause which we submitted to a " candid world" took 
the form of independence help came. As soon as 
Louis XVTs government heard that the American 
colonies had declared themselves free it proposed 
that France and Spain should begin war against 
Great Britain. Men and money began to come to 
us from France. In October our agent in Paris, 
Silas Deane, could ship to America a large amount 
of ammunition, thirty thousand muskets, and cloth- 
ing for twenty thousand soldiers. The commission 
from the independent United States of America, 
which superseded Deane's agency in Paris at the 
close of 1776, made steady progress toward the 
negotiation of our first treaties of alliance and com- 
merce. Jefferson had been asked to serve on this 
commission with Franklin and Deane, but another 
service, which we shall study in our next chapter, 
appealed to him with a clearer call, and Arthur Lee 
was substituted in his place. That foreign nations 
helped us for the destruction of the British Empire 
rather than for the establishment of the American 
Republic did not affect the value of their aid. What 
that value was every student of the American Revo- 
lution knows. Whether or not we should have even- 
tually established our independence without the help 
of France it is impossible to say. So judicious a 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 49 

scholar as Mr. Lecky believes that most of the States 
would have given up the struggle without this help. 
Although New England and Virginia might have 
kept up a valiant but desperate resistance for a 
time, "the peace party would soon have gained the 
ascendancy and the colonies have been reunited to 
the mother country.' ' 

The Declaration of Independence was a fitting 
climax to Jefferson's splendid campaign for political 
freedom, and would alone suffice to place him high 
in the honor-roll of the founders of the American 
state. It was a masterly condensation of the Sum- 
mary View and the Reply to Lord North, thrown into 
the form of a stirring manifesto to the American 
people and the world at large. And its influence on 
America and the world at large has been beyond 
calculation. Even England herself, led astray for 
the moment by false counsels, was helped by its 
plain and ruthless lesson to regain the path of jus- 
tice; for the Declaration was an appeal from an 
England badly governed to an England to be better 
governed. It was the voice of Milton speaking 
again. There is no need to introduce Rousseau and 
the French philosophers of the eighteenth century 
to explain Jefferson's language. " The natural rights 
of man" was a doctrine as old as the Roman law, 
and "government by consent of the governed" was 
the principle for which the "republicans" of the 
seventeenth century had fought their battle of four- 



50 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

score years against the Stuart kings. It is doubtful 
whether Jefferson had read a word of Rousseau's 
Contrat social in 1776, but for a decade he had been 
a profound student of Coke and Milton, of Harring- 
ton and Locke. 1 

To the end of his long career of varied service to 
the American Republic Jefferson continued faithful 
to the doctrine of government by the consent of the 
governed, of confidence in the people to shape their 
own political destinies, of liberty as a gift of God 
and not a grant from monarchs. On the approach 
of the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of 
Independence the city of Washington invited Jef- 
ferson to take part in its celebration. He had 
entered his eighty^fourth year and was too feeble 
to accept the invitation. But in his letter of regret 
written to Mayor Weightman on June 24, 1826 — 
the last letter of his life — he renewed his pledge to 
the doctrines of the immortal Declaration and sum- 
moned his countrymen to "an undiminished devo- 
tion" to its principles: "May it be to the world 
what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to 
others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing 
men to burst the chains under which monkish igno- 
rance and superstition had persuaded them to bind 

1 The influence of John Locke's Two Treatises on Government, pub- 
lished at the time of the English revolution of 1688-9, is traceable 
even to words and phrases in the Declaration. Compare the ex- 
amples cited from Locke's second Treatise by Professor Channing, 
in his History of the United States, vol. Ill, p. 10. 






DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 51 

themselves, and to assume the blessings and security 
of self-government." 

On the granite obelisk which he had chosen for 
his monument, Jefferson asked to have three of his 
services to the cause of liberty inscribed. The first 
was: Author of the Declaration of American 
Independence. 



CHAPTER III 
THE REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 

The Gothic idea that we are to look backwards instead of forwards 
for the improvement of the human mind, and to recur to the annals of 
our ancestors for what is most perfect in government, in religion, and 
in learning, is worthy of those bigots in religion and government by 
whom it has been recommended, and whose purpose it would answer. 
(Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, January 27, 1800.) 

"Liberty and union, now and forever, one and in- 
separable!" Since Daniel Webster pronounced the 
marriage banns between liberty and union, and Abra- 
ham Lincoln stopped the action for divorce, the tie 
has remained consecrated and inviolable in our 
American democracy. But Liberty was a jealous 
maiden, needing many years of wooing before she 
would consent to Union, and dwelling long even 
after her grudging consent was given on the fear of 
" losing her freedom." It was liberty, not union, 
for which our fathers fought in the Revolution. 
Union was the necessaiy means, for unless the pa- 
triots of Massachusetts and Virginia, of Pennsyl- 
vania and Georgia, made common cause, they could 
not hope to win. But the union was only the sum 
of its parts, a federation, and the Congress a central 
board of direction, without any specified powers or 
sanctioned authority, until a few months before the 

52 



REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 53 

British surrender at Yorktown. Even for eight 
years afterward it was without the fundamental 
sovereign rights of taxation and executive au- 
thority. There was no national government during 
the American Revolution and the " critical period" 
which followed, but only a national committee con- 
vened by the governments of the States. There 
was no supreme national state, but only a consensus 
of the States. If Congress actually assumed great 
powers, raised and equipped armies, declared inde- 
pendence, borrowed money, and concluded treaties, 
it was only as the steward of the interests of the 
States and in some cases by their explicit mandate. 
The Congress of the Confederation exercised only 
powers of attorney. 

Unless we realize these facts we shall misunder- 
stand the spirit and misjudge the men of the early 
years of our history. " Citizenship, " " patriotism, " 
"allegiance," and the like terms, which inevitably 
mean for us American citizenship, patriotism, and 
allegiance, had a different signification before our 
national state was firmly founded, before we had a 
national domain, before our national courts admin- 
istered a national law impartially throughout our 
land, before a powerful national executive was chosen 
by a nation-wide franchise to conduct the govern- 
ment, not of a majority of the States nor even of the 
sum of the States, but of a new, independent, and 
autonomous United States. In the early days there 



L THOMAS JEFFERSON 

were citizens of New Hampshire, of New York, of 
Vir£?. lia, of South Carolina, attached by long tradi- 
tion to their colonial institutions, and owing a larger 
but remote allegiance only to a King or Parliament 
across the ocean. Their "land" was not England, 
however, nor yet America, but the particular colony 
in which they lived. In his Notes on Virginia, pub- 
lished just at the close of the American Revolution, 
Jefferson constantly speaks of Virginia as "my 
country." When the breach with England came, 
the most immediate and urgent duty of patriots, 
next to vindicating their independence in arms, was 
to reshape the government of their new-fledged 
"States" to accord with the political principles 
which had been developing in the American mind 
since the publication in 1762 of James Otis's Vin- 
dication of the Conduct of the House of Representa- 
tives of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. 

In no other State was the need of reform more 
crying than in Virginia. New England, often aris- 
tocratic and intolerant enough in practice, had, nev- 
ertheless, the seeds of democratic institutions in its 
founding. "I can give you the receipt for making a 
New England in Virginia," said John Adams one 
day at dinner to a friend from the Old Dominion 
who was bewailing its conservatism — "town-meet- 
ings, training days, schools, and ministers." The 
Middle States, with their cosmopolitan population, 
their commercial preoccupations, their religious va- 



REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 55 

nations, escaped the cramping mould of a social 
type-form. But Virginia was social England trans- 
planted. The Old Dominion, "most faithful of the 
King's distant children/' as Charles II called it, 
clung tenaciously to its habits when its children 
came of age. Estates were held in "fee tail": that 
is, not an acre or a slave could be alienated to pay 
the debt which might hang like a millstone about 
the neck of an incompetent or extravagant proprie- 
tor. The law of primogeniture devised the entire 
property to the eldest son, leaving his mother and 
sisters dependent on his bounty and condemning the 
younger brothers to be pensioners or adventurers. 
The landed aristocracy lacked only the titles of their 
English cousins to be a complete caste. Between 
them and the negroes were only the "poor whites/ ' 
a miserable class pushed by the rich planters into 
the unfertile uplands and excluded by the slaves 
from the dignified diversity of labor. A solid middle 
class, industrious, inventive, educated, conscious of 
its freedom, sharing equitably in the soil, the bone 
and marrow of a community, was lacking. 

Stupid and cruel laws stood on the statute-books 
of Virginia, laws the more cruel and stupid because 
the exercise of the royal veto in the colony had dis- 
couraged the efforts for reform. Jefferson speaks 
bitterly in his Memoir of the "negations (vetoes) of 
councils, governors, and kings/' to restrain us from 
doing right. Twenty-three acts against the slave- 



56 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

trade were passed by the Virginia House of Bur- 
gesses between the years 1699 and 1772, and every 
one of them was vetoed by the King or by his gov- 
ernor in the colony. There were laws against witch- 
craft, laws for the ducking of women and the inflic- 
tion of the barbarous punishment of the lex talionis 
— "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." There 
were heresy laws which, if enforced, would have 
brought Thomas Jefferson to the stake. To deny 
the Trinity meant three years' imprisonment. A 
Unitarian or a freethinker was considered unfit to 
be the custodian of his own children. "I want to 
breathe again your free air," wrote young James 
Madison to a northern friend after he had returned 
to Virginia from Princeton College. He cried out 
against "the diabolical, hell-conceived principle of 
persecution" that "raged" among the clergy of his 
native State, and declared that the King would re- 
duce all America to submission if the Church of 
England were established and endowed in all the 
colonies as it was in Virginia. 

The reform of the political and social institutions 
of his "country," in such glaring contradiction to 
the republican principles which he himself and a 
score of other able writers, like Otis, the Adamses, 
Dickinson, Hopkins, and Bland, had made the ac- 
cepted doctrine of the American Revolution, ap- 
pealed to Jefferson with irresistible force. He threw 
himself into the work with unflagging zeal, seizing 



REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 57 

"the laboring oar." In September he resigned the 
seat in Congress to which he had been re-elected, 
and on October 7 entered the Virginia house of dele- 
gates, the first legislature of the State convened 
under its new constitution. 1 The day he took his 
seat a messenger from Congress arrived at Williams- 
burg, with the flattering invitation for him to join 
Franklin and Deane at Paris in a mission to seek aid 
from France and other European countries. Jeffer- 
son wanted very much to go. The attractions of 
the "capital city of the world," its music, art, letters, 
and science, appealed strongly to the refined tastes 
and insatiable mental curiosity of the young man 
of thirty-three. He considered the offer three days, 

1 The Virginia constitution of 1776, with the noble bill of rights 
accompanying it, was drawn by George Mason. Jefferson was in 
Congress at the time and serving on several committees; but he 
found time to write the full draft of a constitution for Virginia, which 
he forwarded to the convention at Richmond by his friend George 
Wythe. It arrived on the very day that Mason's draft, after sev- 
eral weeks of debate, "inch by inch," was finally reported to the 
house, and the committee was unwilling, "from mere lassitude," 
as Jefferson says, to reopen the debates on the subject. However, 
they liked Jefferson's preamble so well that they "tacked it on the 
work of George Mason." Jefferson's draft was lost for a hundred 
years. It is published in full in P. L. Ford's edition of Jefferson's 
Writings (vol. II, pp. 7-30), and it is well worth study both as a 
foretaste of the legislation which Jefferson introduced into the 
house and as an illustration of his jealousy of the executive power. 
Jefferson thought that a new convention should have been convened 
with specified constituent powers for so serious a matter as framing 
a new State constitution. In view of the development of the doc- 
trine of "States' rights" in the South, it is a fact of curious inter- 
est that a Virginia member, Ludwell Lee, proposed in 1776 that 
Congress should " prepare a uniform plan for the governments in 
America to be approved by the colonies " (States). 



58 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

and then resolutely put the noble temptation behind 
him. He had put his hand to the plough to break up 
the hard and stubborn soil of generations of feudal 
privilege and aristocratic caste in his beloved " coun- 
try" of Virginia; and having put his hand to the 
plough he would not turn back. "When I left Con- 
gress in 1776," he says in his Memoir, "it was in the 
persuasion that our whole code must be reviewed, 
adapted to our republican form of government, and 
. . . corrected in all its parts, with a single eye to 
reason and the good of those for whose government 
it was framed." 

On October 11 Jefferson was appointed on several 
important committees of the legislature, and the 
next day he obtained leave to introduce a "Bill to 
enable tenants in tail to convey their lands in fee 
simple." The bill was passed. "It was the first 
great blow at the aristocratic class in Virginia," 
which had been based on the transmission of un- 
divided estates from one generation to the next. It 
had formed, says Jefferson, "a patrician order dis- 
tinguished by the splendor and luxury of their es- 
tablishments," an order from which "the King 
habitually selected his counsellors of state." "To 
annul this privilege and instead of an aristocracy of 
wealth ... to make an opening for the aristocracy 
of virtue and talent, which nature has wisely pro- 
vided for the direction of the interests of society 
and scattered with equal hand through all its con- 



REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 59 

ditions, was deemed essential to a well-ordered re- 
public. " 1 With entails went the allied institution 
of primogeniture. Pendleton, in behalf of the old 
families of Virginia, pleaded that the eldest son 
might have at least double the portion of the 
younger ones, but Jefferson was inexorable: not un- 
less the eldest son needed a double portion of food, 
he said, or did a double portion of work ! 

The social revolution wrought by this legislation 
was complete. It threw every acre of land and every 
slave in Virginia into the economic current of ex- 
change and put all heirs on an equality. The old 
Virginia families were attached to their estates with 
a religious devotion. "They had come chiefly from 
the country districts of England," says Shaler, "and 
their absorbing passion was the possession of land." 
There is a story that John Randolph of Roanoke 
set his dogs on a man who came to ask the price of 
the estate. The thought of any of the beloved 
acres of Tuckahoe or Mount Vernon or Rose- 
well or Gunston Hall going into the hands of a 
stranger was like treason or profanation. The aris- 
tocrats of Virginia, among them some of his own kin 
on his mother's side, never forgave Jefferson for this 



1 It is only an instance of the depreciatory tone in which certain 
historians still deal with Jefferson, when J. T. Morse cites this sim- 
ple, straightforward statement as written in "Jefferson's grandiose, 
humanitarian, and self -laudatory vein." Humanitarian it may be 
— the more the credit ! — but what there is grandiose or self -laudatory 
about it is hard to see. 



60 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

legislation, put through the house by the influence 
of the democracy of the counties back of the tide- 
water. There were even those who, adding a Bour- 
bon piety to a Bourbon pride, declared that the 
death of Jefferson's only son in infancy (1777) was 
a " judgment of God" upon him; and fifty years later, 
when Virginia was declining in economic prestige 
before the rising manufactures of the North, there 
were still belated Cassandras harping on the ruin 
to the State caused by Jefferson's abolition of entail 
and primogeniture. 

It would take us far beyond the limits of this brief 
biography to give even the merest outline of the 
manifold activities of Jefferson in the new Virginia 
Legislature of 1776. In the opening month of 
October, for example, besides elaborating the laws 
on entails and descent, he served on committees 
dealing with naturalization laws, the definition of 
treason, the location of the capital, the encourage- 
ment of manufactures, the improvement of naviga- 
tion, the organization of courts, the regulation of 
the militia, the refining of the currency. There 
were two of these October committees, however, on 
which Jefferson's work was so significant and lasting 
that we must devote a few pages to them — the 
standing committee "of religion," appointed Octo- 
ber 11, and the committee, chosen in pursuance of 
Jefferson's bill of October 24, for the "revision of 
the laws." 



REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 61 

Religion was in a parlous state in Virginia. The 
Episcopal Church was established by law, endowed 
with lands (glebes), and supported by taxes (tithes). 
Secure in their position, the clergy performed their 
Sunday duties in a proper and perfunctory fashion, 
paying little attention to either religion or charities 
during the week. They were, as some one remarked, 
"a gentleman's club." "Against this inactivity," 
says Jefferson, "the zeal and industry of the secta- 
rian (especially the Baptist) preachers had an open 
and undisputed field; and by the time of the Revo- 
lution a majority of the inhabitants of the colony 
had become dissenters from the established church, 
but were still obliged to pay contributions to sup- 
port the pastors of the minority." The legislature 
of 1776 was " crowded with petitions to abolish this 
spiritual tyranny." Jefferson wanted full religious 
liberty and a complete separation of church and 
state; but the powers of the establishment were too 
strong. If the majority of the inhabitants were 
dissenters, the majority of the legislature were 
churchmen. After a bitter fight of two months, all 
that the radicals could obtain was a repeal of the 
laws making heresy or absence from worship a 
crime and forcing dissenters to contribute to the 
support of the church. Jefferson kept up the fight, 
however, from session to session, until in the sum- 
mer of 1779 the Anglican Church was disestab- 
lished. Another seven years passed before the man 



62 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

on whom Jefferson's mantle fell in the Virginia Leg- 
islature, James Madison, was able to get the bill for 
religious liberty passed. 

This famous bill was drawn by Jefferson in June, 
1779, and watched through all its fortunes with 
jealous care. Jefferson was our minister in Paris 
when the bill finally passed in 1786. He had it 
printed in both English and French and circulated 
as a pamphlet. It was received with great enthusi- 
asm in Europe. And well it might be! For al- 
though there were lands in which religious persecu- 
tion had wholly ceased in western Europe, there 
was no sovereign state in Christendom in the year 
1786 that had formally proclaimed in its laws the 
absolute religious freedom of every one of its citi- 
zens. The honor of making that declaration to the 
world was Virginia's — and Thomas Jefferson's. 1 
The second of the three services which Jefferson 
asked to have engraved on his monument was: 
Author of the Statute of Virginia for Relig- 
ious Freedom. 

The magnificent language of this statute, though 

1 Some of the foremost men of Virginia in the struggle for political 
liberty were opposed to the radical religious programme of Jefferson, 
Madison, and Monroe. Henry and R. H. Lee both believed with 
the clergy that religion would be destroyed "without a legal obliga- 
tion to contribute something to its support." Washington wrote 
Mason in 1785: "Although no man's sentiments are more opposed 
to any kind of restraint upon religious principles than mine are, yet 
I confess I am not among the number of those who are so much 
alarmed at making men pay toward the support of that which they 
profess." 



REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 63 

unfortunately it must be somewhat abbreviated, 
shall stand here without paraphrase or comment: 

Well aware that the opinions and beliefs of men depend 
not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evi- 
dence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath 
created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will 
that free it shall remain, by making it altogether insus- 
ceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by 
temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacita- 
tions, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and mean- 
ness; . . . that the impious presumption of legislature 
and ruler, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being them- 
selves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed do- 
minion over the faith of others . . . hath established 
and maintained false religions over the greatest part of 
the world and thro' all time; that to compel a man to 
furnish contributions of money for the propagation of 
opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and 
tyrannical; . . . that our civil rights have no dependence 
on our religious opinions any more than on our opinions 
in physics or geometry; . . . that the opinions of men 
are not the object of civil government, nor under its juris- 
diction; . . . that it is time enough for the rightful pur- 
poses of civil government for its officers to interfere when 
principles break out into overt acts against peace and 
good order; and finally that truth is great and will pre- 
vail if left to herself . . . errors ceasing to be dangerous 
when it is permitted freely to contradict them: We the 
General Assembly of Virginia do enact that no man shall 
be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, 
place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, re- 
strained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, or 
shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions 



64 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

or beliefs; but that all men shall be free to profess and by 
argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion, 
and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or 
affect their civil capacities.' ' 

The Jeffersonian principle of religious freedom 
was introduced into the Constitution of the United 
States by the First Amendment, chiefly through the 
efforts of James Madison, and for half a century it 
furnished the progressive men of every State the 
inspiration and arguments for religious emancipa- 
tion, until civil authority and religious conformity 
were divorced in every part of the Union. We re- 
gard religious liberty as a natural right to-day, and 
look on it as intolerable that any man should pre- 
sume to have in his keeping the conscience of 
another. Yet this was not so when Jefferson began 
his liberating work a century and a half ago. It is 
often the greatest benefits that we requite with the 
least gratitude, because they are just the ones which 
we can least imagine ourselves being without. No 
invention of science, no creation of art, no reform of 
politics can compare in importance for the human 
race with freedom of conscience. 

We have seen that Jefferson's avowed object in 
leaving Congress for a seat in the Virginia Legisla- 
ture was the reform of the entire law code of his 
State, "with a single eye to reason and the good of 
those for whose government it was framed." In No- 
vember, 1776, a committee of revision was appointed, 



REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 65 

consisting of Jefferson, Pendleton, Wythe, Mason, 
and T. L. Lee. They met at Fredericksburg early 
in January to agree on the principles of revision 
and to portion out the work among themselves. 
When they came to the actual work of revision, how- 
ever, Mason and Lee resigned from the committee 
because they were not lawyers, and the whole work 
fell upon the other three. Jefferson's burden was, 
as usual, the heaviest. To him was assigned the 
whole field of the common law and statutes of Eng- 
land down to the foundation of the colony of Vir- 
ginia in 1607. The British statutes from 1607 to 
the end of the colonial period were assigned to 
Wythe and the Virginia laws during the same 
period to Pendleton. After two full years' work in 
their respective fields, the committee met at Wil- 
liamsburg in February, 1779, and went over the re- 
sults together, "day by day, sentence by sentence, 
scrutinizing and amending" until they had agreed 
upon the whole. On June 18, 1779, they pre- 
sented the result to the legislature in one hundred 
and twenty-six bills, "making a printed folio of 
ninety-two pages." 

This elaborate draft of one hundred and twenty- 
six bills was never acted on as a whole, but "some 
bills," as Jefferson says in his Memoir, "were taken 
out occasionally . . . and passed." The interrup- 
tion of the work of legislative reform was chiefly due 
to the turn which the Revolutionary War had taken. 



66 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

The British, defeated in their campaign for the Hud- 
son and driven to extreme measures by the alliance 
between America and France, had transferred the 
seat of war to the Southern States. General Prevost 
seized Savannah in December, 1778, and proceeded 
to the conquest of South Carolina. Just at the 
moment that the revisers were presenting their re- 
port to the Virginia Legislature, General Lincoln was 
hastening to save Charleston. The Carolinas and 
Georgia looked to the rich and populous State of 
Virginia to help them. Food, horses, ammunition, 
men, and guns were generously sent by the legisla- 
ture at Williamsburg. Then came the invasion of 
Virginia itself, the raids of Leslie and Arnold herald- 
ing the campaign of Cornwallis, which brought the 
active hostilities of the Revolution to an end on the 
Virginia peninsula of Yorktown. Inter arma silent 
leges. When peace came, and the recovery from 
the ravages of war, the unfinished business of legal 
reform was renewed. Jefferson was no longer in 
the legislature, but his faithful lieutenant, Madison, 
by his "unwearied exertions" got most of the im- 
portant bills through. It happened, as with every 
extensive plan of reform, that some measures were 
adopted at once, some were temporarily defeated 
only to triumph later over conservative opposition, 
and some were dismissed finally into the realm of 
the Utopian. The successful measures included the 
abolition of the slave-trade, the laws for the recovery 



REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 67 

of debts, for the organization of the courts, and for 
the reform of the penal code. By the latter the 
death penalty for twenty-seven felonies was abol- 
ished, and by a later addition (1796) the barbarous 
features of the lex talionis were stricken from the 
Virginia code. 

On the other hand, two projects of reform which 
Jefferson cherished equally with religious emancipa- 
tion and the abolition of entails were doomed to 
utter defeat. Jefferson was a consistent antislavery 
man. When he entered the House of Burgesses in 
1769, he tells us in his Memoir, his first act was an 
effort to secure the passage of a bill permitting mas- 
ters to emancipate their slaves at will. 1 We have 
seen how in the original draft of the Declaration of 
Independence he arraigned George III for his part 
in fixing slavery on the colony of Virginia. Now 
that Virginia was free from royal control he hoped 
his countrymen would abolish the evil entirely. But 
he was doomed to disappointment. The committee 
on revision refused to report a bill in favor of eman- 
cipation and would only agree to the form of an 
amendment to be offered to the legislature in case 
such a bill should be taken up. This singular amend- 
ment, unmistakably from Jefferson's pen, provided 
that the children born of slave mothers "should con- 



1 A colonial statute of 1729 provided that no slave should be set 
free "on any pretence whatsoever, except for some meritorious ser- 
vices, to be adjudged and allowed by the Governor and Council." 



68 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

tinue with their parents to a certain age, then be 
brought up at public expense, to tillage, arts or 
sciences, according to their geniuses, till the females 
should be eighteen and the males twenty-one years 
of age"; then they should be sent out in colonies to 
some "proper place" [a West Indian island] fur- 
nished with arms, live stock, seeds, tools, etc., by the 
government, and taken under the protection of the 
State until they were strong enough to care for 
themselves. This quixotic plan was never even de- 
bated. Writing nearly a half a century later, under 
the ominous peace of the Missouri Compromise, 
Jefferson says of his emancipation plan: "It was 
found that the public mind would not bear the 
proposition, nor will it bear it even to this day (1821). 
Yet the day is not distant when it must bear and 
adopt it, or worse will follow. Nothing is more cer- 
tainly written in the book of fate than that these 
people are to be free." 

Another project which was dear to Jefferson's 
heart, but which the "public mind" of Virginia 
"would not yet bear," was a general system of edu- 
cation. The bills which he prepared on this sub- 
ject at the request of his colleagues on the board of 
revisers called for the institution of primary and 
secondary schools all over the State. At the same 
time the College of William and Mary, whose cur- 
riculum was confined to theology, philosophy, and 
the classics, was to be enlarged into a State univer- 






REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 69 

sity with ample provision for history, modern lan- 
guages, and applied mathematics and science. And 
finally the sum of two thousand pounds a year was 
to be set apart by the legislature for the establish- 
ment and maintenance of a free public library at 
Richmond. 

The education bills were not acted on until 1796, 
and then "only so much of the first as provided for 
elementary schools/ ' whose establishment was left 
optional with the courts of each county. Little was 
done, naturally, under this system of local option, 
for public education in Virginia. The piedmont 
counties were poor, and the large dissenting popula- 
tion in them was jealous of the supervision of over- 
seers and visitors who were required by law to be 
churchmen. The tide-water counties were "aris- 
tocratic," without any conviction of the necessity 
or expediency of educating the "lower classes" be- 
yond their station. In spite of the defeat of his 
projects, however, Jefferson never lost a grain of his 
faith in the mission of education to ameliorate the 
condition of the people at large. Like the warning 
against the danger of perpetuating negro slavery, 
this other warning against the evils of an uneducated 
populace runs through his writings. "If a nation 
expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civiliza- 
tion," he wrote to Charles Yancey in 1816, "it ex- 
pects what never was and never will be." 

After he had done with the cares of office and re- 



70 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

turned to Monticello to spend the declining years of 
life, Jefferson bent his best energies to the creation 
of a State university which should be a model for 
institutions of higher learning throughout the land. 
The results of his efforts of a half a century in the 
cause of education were so important both for his 
own State and for the country at large that we shall 
return to the subject in a later chapter. Here we 
simply record the eventual triumph of the project 
which failed so signally in the meagre legislation 
which the friends of education could wring from the 
Virginia Legislature before the nineteenth century. 
Jefferson thought of the revision of the Virginia 
laws as a contribution to a definite social reform of 
the State, especially in the major bills on entail, 
primogeniture, religious freedom, and public educa- 
tion. Referring to them, he says in his Memoir: 
"I considered four of these bills, passed or reported, 
as forming a system by which every fibre would be 
eradicated of an antient or future aristocracy, and a 
foundation laid for a government truly republican." 
We have seen that his program was only imper- 
fectly realized. It was Utopian in parts; it was 
everywhere boldly and bravely optimistic. It failed 
in many of its recommendations; but its signifi- 
cance is not finally in the success or failure of this or 
that particular bill. James Bryce, in his lecture on 
" Jefferson and the Constitution," says truly: "Jef- 
ferson's influence has been on the spirit of the people 



REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 71 

and their attitude towards institutions rather than 
on the formation of institutions themselves.' ' To 
the mind that finds it difficult to appreciate such 
imponderable influences, Jefferson seems like a 
dreamer dwelling in a fool's paradise of optimism or 
blocking the path of efficient government with ex- 
asperating political scruples. "He died as he had 
lived," says Oliver, "in the odor of phrases." That 
is the way principles appear to some minds. 

Jefferson's work as a reformer of the laws and cus- 
toms of old Virginia has been far too little noticed 
by his biographers. This lies partly, no doubt, in 
the comparative indifference of the Northern schol- 
ars who have written most of our histories to the 
development of local institutions in the South. "If 
Jefferson had done his [legal] work east of the Hud- 
son or north of the Susquehanna," writes a member 
of the Virginia bar, "he would be rated far higher 
among the greatest legal minds America has pro- 
duced." To my mind, however, the neglect of 
Jefferson as a legislator and reformer is due far more 
to the overemphasis of his work as a party organ- 
izer and politician. He is far better known as the 
antagonist of Hamilton than as the colleague of 
Wythe and Pendleton. And yet, while we may not 
allow a man to be the final judge of his own charac- 
ter, it is only fair to respect his estimate of his own 
accomplishments, especially when he makes that 
estimate calmly and reflectively at the end of a 



72 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

long life. In a pathetic little passage stitched into 
his Memoir on a memorandum leaf, Jefferson says: 
"I have sometimes asked myself whether my coun- 
try is better for my having lived at all. I do not 
know that it is. I have been the instrument of 
doing the following things — but they would have 
been done by others, some of them, perhaps, a little 
better." The things he goes on to mention are just 
these reforms which we have been studying. In a 
list of ten services, only one is national and political 
in its nature — the Declaration of Independence. 
The others are reforms — religious, economic, penal, 
educational, agrarian, fiscal — which he accomplished, 
or strove to accomplish, for his " country" of Vir- 
ginia. He does not mention the Louisiana Pur- 
chase, but recalls with satisfaction the improvement 
of the navigation of the Rivanna. He omits the 
triumph over the Federalists in the great battle of 
1800, but dwells with pride on the introduction into 
Virginia of a better quality of rice from Lombardy. 
When we remember that Virginia was the largest 
and richest State in the Union during the first gen- 
eration of our history under the Constitution, that 
she furnished four out of our firfet five Presidents, 
that her influence was enormous on the States to 
the south of her and considerable on the States to 
the north, we realize what it meant, not for Virginia 
alone, but for our whole country, that the stamp of 
Thomas Jefferson's liberalism was put on the insti- 



REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 73 

tutions of the Old Dominion in the critical years just 
following our independence. His was the first law in 
the modern world sanctioning expatriation. His was 
the first law of a slave state abolishing the slave- 
trade. His was the first law of modern times appor- 
tioning punishment to crime on a rational and hu- 
mane principle. His was the first conception in our 
country of a free university as a "group of faculties" 
in which the elective system prevailed. His was the 
first formal declaration of complete religious liberty 
by a sovereign state in the history of the world. 
For half a century the influence of his work for Vir- 
ginia was spread abroad — his educational ideas to 
Michigan, Missouri, Massachusetts, Maine, and 
Kentucky; his antislavery principles to the North- 
west Territory; his elective system to Harvard; his 
liberal ideas of citizenship to the nation. New York 
followed Virginia's lead in the abolition of entails 
in 1782, North Carolina in 1784, Kentucky in 1796, 
New Jersey in 1820. Far down into the nineteenth 
century broad-minded men in every State were 
drawing on Jefferson's arguments, citing his letters, 
quoting the forceful passages of his Notes on Virginia, 
and the preamble to his bill for religious freedom, 
until all over our republic there was vindicated the 
simple but hard-won truth that "the opinions of 
men are not the object of civil government nor 
under its jurisdiction.' ' 
As a politician Jefferson appears to some as crafty 



74 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

and oversubtle. Others regard him as a feeble and 
counsel-reft executive. His fundamental political 
principle of trust in a people trained to mistrust its 
governors seems to many open to grave objections 
on the grounds of both policy and wisdom. But 
as a liberalizing and liberating influence on the 
spirit of the American people he stands without a 
peer until the advent of Abraham Lincoln. Napo- 
leon Bonaparte said: "I shall go down to posterity 
with the Code in my hand." How much more 
finely could Jefferson say this ! For the code of 
Napoleon was order, but the code of Thomas Jeffer- 
son was order and liberty. 



CHAPTER IV 
JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 

We consider ourselves bound in honor, as well as interest, to share 
one general fate with our sister colonies; and we should hold ourselves 
base deserters of that union to which we have acceded, were we to agree 
on any measures distinct and apart from them. (Address from Vir- 
ginia Burgesses to Governor Dunmore, June 12, 1775.) 

A few days before the committee of revisers 
made their report to the legislature, Jefferson was 
chosen governor of Virginia to succeed Patrick 
Henry, who had served for three consecutive an- 
nual terms since the State became a free republic. 
Jefferson occupied the office for two years, from 
June, 1779, to June, 1781 — two years which, with 
the possible exception of the closing years of his 
presidency, were the most irksome period of his 
whole public life. In his Memoir, after devoting 
twenty pages to the work of the law revision, he 
passes over the governorship in silence, alleging as 
his reason that to write his own history during those 
two years would be but to duplicate the histories 
of the State already written. But we may suspect 
that it was more than a scruple against furnishing 
a redundancy of historical material that made Jef- 
ferson so reticent during his whole life on the sub- 

75 



76 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ject of his gubernatorial office. His sensitive nature 
shrank from controversy. Accused of timidity, 
vacillation, incapacity, and even personal cowardice 
in his high office, he made a dignified defense before 
the legislature, which won a unanimous vote of con- 
fidence in his "ability, rectitude and integrity as 
chief magistrate of the Commonwealth/ ' and left 
further vindication of his behavior to his friendly 
biographers. The task has been performed with 
pious and laborious devotion by Mr. Randall, who, 
in over a hundred and twenty large octavo pages, 
sifts every ugly charge, and succeeds, even in the 
opinion of the acrid Morse, in "establishing a 
satisfactory defense" of his hero, albeit the facts 
and arguments have to be "rescued dripping from 
a sea of rhetoric and fine writing.' ' 

The year 1779 was ominous for the States south 
of the Potomac. Defeated in their endeavor to 
occupy the Hudson-Champlain line of communica- 
tion with Canada, exasperated by the consequent 
affiance of the French King with the rebellious 
Americans, forced to evacuate the "capital" of 
Philadelphia for want of proper defenses in Delaware 
Bay against the appearance of a French fleet, the 
British had decided to transfer their military opera- 
tions to the south and to prosecute them with a 
ruthlessness which contrasted strangely with the 
dilatory and urbane assaults of Howe, Burgoyne, 
and Clinton. "The whole contest is changed," ran 



JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 77 

the proclamation issued by the English commission- 
ers in October, 1778; "the policy as well as the 
benevolence of Great Britain has thus far checked 
the extremes of war, where they tended to distress 
a people still considered as our fellow-subjects, and 
to desolate a country shortly to become a source of 
mutual advantage. But when that country pro- 
fesses the unnatural design of mortgaging herself to 
our enemies . . . the question is how far Great 
Britain by every means in her power may destroy or 
render useless a connection contrived for her ruin 
and for the aggrandizement of France." Thus the 
policy of "f rightfulness" was announced. 

Savannah was taken by the British in December, 
1778, and the entire defenseless State of Georgia 
thereby put at the mercy of the invader. The 
British moved on to Charleston from the south, 
while General Clinton detached two thousand men 
from his army in New Jersey to ravage the coast 
of Virginia. It was under the shadow of these ca- 
lamities that Jefferson took the oath as governor 
of Virginia. 

The condition of the State was precarious. Broad 
rivers running through the flat lands of the tide- 
water emptied along an extensive coast line in 
Chesapeake Bay, and offered the opportunity for 
vessels of several hundred tons to ascend far into 
the interior of the State. There were no mountain 
fastnesses, caves, and lairs to offer a small guerilla 



78 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

force the protection whence they could sally forth 
to harass large numbers of invaders. The State 
had but four vessels of war. Its militia of fifty 
thousand men, an average of one man to the square 
mile, was scattered and ill-equipped. Jefferson 
doubted if there were more than one gun to every 
four or five soldiers. The immense region stretch- 
ing like an opening wedge westward to the Missis- 
sippi and northward to Lake Superior was still a 
part of Virginia according to the interpretation of 
the royal charter of 1609, and its defense against 
the Indians incited by the British commander at 
Detroit was a heavy drain on the resources of the 
State. 

To place the Virginia coast in a state of defense 
against raids while the British held control of the 
seas was a task which ten times the resources of the 
State in men and money would not have been able 
to accomplish. Nor was it expected. The British 
landed where they would, from Boston to Savannah. 
All that could be done was to check their progress 
inland and to prevent the junction of their forces. 
The military genius of Washington himself, with 
the continental army at his back, could do no more; 
and he knew that the civilian governor of a State, 
with a scanty militia to rely on, must perforce do 
even less. All his correspondence with Jefferson 
during the war shows that he accepted this inevi- 
table menace of invasion with equanimity, or at 



JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 79 

least with resignation. He only suggested that 
Jefferson might do something for the defense of 
the State in constructing boats to prevent the 
enemy "from being able to move up and down the 
rivers in small parties." 

But even if Jefferson had had the whole body of 
the militia of Virginia at his disposal on the lower 
James, these troops could not have been employed, 
consistently with the policy of the American strat- 
egy, in defending Virginia. The common cause de- 
manded the application of such forces as the States 
could muster to the points of common danger. The 
descent of a British raiding-party on Portsmouth or 
Suffolk or Richmond was a slight calamity as com- 
pared with the total subjugation of the Carolinas 
by Cornwallis and his "hunting leopard," Tarleton. 
For the loss of the Carolinas meant the invasion of 
Virginia in force. The Old Dominion fought best 
for her own life out beyond her borders. "The 
evils you have to apprehend from these predatory 
excursions," wrote Washington to Jefferson after the 
severe raid of 1781, "are not to be compared to the 
injury to the common cause and with the danger 
to your own state in particular, from the conquest 
of the states to the southward of you. I am per- 
suaded that the attention to your immediate safety 
will not divert you from the measures intended to 
reinforce the southern army." Washington was 
even convinced that the raid on Virginia was only 



80 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

intended as a diversion to relieve Cornwallis by the 
withdrawal of Virginia troops from Greene's army 
in the South. According to the commander-in-chief 
of the American army, then, Virginia's first duty 
was to pour her aid into the Carolinas and "keep 
the weight of war at a distance from her." 

This duty Virginia performed nobly. From her 
stores of grain, vegetables, pork, wagons, horses, 
and men she contributed liberally. When Charles- 
ton capitulated to the British in May, 1780, the 
Virginia Legislature sent seven hundred militiamen 
to strengthen the regular army, established muni- 
tion works and public stores, and authorized im- 
pressments of foodstuffs and military supplies. 
Jefferson's own horses and wagons were among the 
first taken. The ill-starred Gates assumed com- 
mand of the Southern army in the summer of 1780. 
From his appearance in Richmond early in July to 
his disastrous defeat at Camden on the 16th of 
August, he received noble support from Virginia. 
On August 4 Jefferson wrote him that cartridge- 
boxes, bayonet-belts, axes, beef, ammunition, and 
arms were being forwarded to his troops. After 
the disaster of the 16th (a disaster which was pre- 
cipitated by the panic of the raw militia from Vir- 
ginia) Jefferson, though "extremely mortified" by 
the conduct of the troops, only made the more 
strenuous efforts to repair the evil. "Instead of 
considering what is past," he wrote to the com- 



JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 81 

mander of the Virginian troops in Gates's army, 
"we are to look forward and prepare for the future." 
To Gates himself he wrote, promising more (and 
let us hope better) men, "three thousand stand of 
arms, and military stores." "Our treasury is 
utterly exhausted," he adds, "and cannot be re- 
plenished until the assembly meets in October. We 
might, however, furnish considerable quantities of 
provisions, were it possible to convey it to you. 
We shall immediately send an agent into the south- 
ern counties to collect and forward all he can." "It 
could not be expected," he generously wrote to 
Madison in the midsummer of 1780, "that North 
Carolina, which contains but one tenth of the 
American militia, should be left to support the 
Southern War alone." 

So Virginia sent off her men and supplies to stay 
the tide of invasion rolling up from the south, well 
knowing to what peril she was exposing herself in 
case the invasion could not be checked. 

Ten thousand Virginia troops, including regulars 
and militia, were in the armies north and south of 
the State. As the year 1780 drew to a close the 
mind of the governor was fixed, where the com- 
mander-in-chief had urged him to fix it, on the war 
beyond his borders. Jefferson wrote on Christmas 
eve to the lieutenants of the counties of Hampshire 
and Berkeley: "A powerful army forming by our 
enemies in the south, and an extensive combination 



82 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

of savages in the west, will probably render the en- 
suing campaign exceedingly active, and particularly 
call forth the exertions of this state. It is our duty 
to look forward in time and to make proper division 
of our force between these two objects." 

It was under these trying circumstances that the 
blow of invasion fell on Virginia. Some eighteen 
hundred men in twenty-seven ships commanded by 
the traitor Benedict Arnold appeared suddenly in 
Chesapeake Bay. We can do no better than to 
transcribe a few sentences on the event from Jeffer- 
son's own diary: 

Saturday, Dec. 30, 1780. Eight o'clock a.m. Re- 
ceived first intelligence that twenty-seven sail were, on 
the morning of Dec. 29, just below Willoughby's Point. 
Sent General Nelson with full powers. 

Jan. 1, 1781. No intelligence. 

Jan. 2d, ten o'clock a.m. Information from N. Burwell 
that their advance was at Warrasqueak Bay. Gave or- 
ders for militia, a quarter from some, a half from other 
counties. Assembly rose. 

. . . Thursday, Jan. 4th, five o'clock a.m. Called 
whole militia from adjacent counties. I was then anxious 
to know whether they would pass Westover or not, as 
that would show the side they would land. . . . Five 
o'clock p.m. Learned by Capt. De Ponthere that at 
2 o'clock p.m. they were drawn up at Westover. Then 
ordered arms, stores etc. to be thrown across the river at 
Richmond; and at half-past seven o'clock p.m. set out to 
the foundry and Westham ... to see everything wag- 
goned from the magazine and laboratory to Westham and 



JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 83 

there thrown over [the river] to work all night. The 
enemy encamped at Four-Mile Creek. 

Jan. 5. . . . Went myself to Westham; gave orders 
for withdrawing ammunition and arms (which lay ex- 
posed on the bank to the effect of artillery from the oppo- 
site shore) behind a point. Then went to Manchester. 
Had a view of the enemy. My horse sank under me with 
fatigue. Borrowed one, went to Chetwoods, appointed 
by Baron Steuben as a rendezvous and head-quarters. . . . 
The enemy arrived at Richmond at one o'clock p.m. 
One regiment of infantry and thirty horse proceeded with- 
out stopping to the foundry, burned that and the maga- 
zine. . . . They returned that evening to Richmond. 
Sent me a proposition to compound for property. Re- 
fused. 

Jan. 6. In the morning they burned certain houses and 
stores, and at 12 o'clock that day left Richmond. 

Jan. 7. Rained excessively the preceding night and 
continued to do so till about noon. Gibson has one 
thousand [militia], Steuben eight hundred, Davis two 
hundred, Nelson two hundred and fifty. . . . 

Jan. 9. The enemy remain in their last encampment, 
except embarking their horse. 

Jan. 10. At one o'clock p.m. They embark infantry 
and fall down the river. 

Jefferson has received unmerciful censure for per- 
mitting this raid of Arnold's. Henry Lee (" Legion 
Harry") in his Memoir of the War in the Southern 
Department of the United States, declared that Vir- 
ginia was not defended in 1781 because her public 
spirit was paralyzed by the " timidity and impotence 
of her rulers, " and that a soldier of genius could 



84 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

have preserved the State from insults and injuries 
"with 300 horse, 300 musketry, and a battalion of 
infantry.' ' John Marshall, in his Life of Washing- 
ton, upbraided Jefferson for neglect of warning: "So 
early as the 9th of December, 1780, a letter from 
Gen'l Washington announced to the Governor [Jef- 
ferson] that a large embarkation, supposed to be 
destined for the South, was about taking place at 
New York." And, following the lead of Lee and 
Marshall, modern historians have characterized 
Jefferson's behavior as "culpably remiss," "weak 
and vacillating," and "stupid." J. T. Morse even 
dismisses Jefferson's desperate efforts during four 
days to collect militia and save stores and lives with 
the sneering remark that "the enemy cared little 
for all his prancing to and fro on blooded steed or 
raw colt." 

Jefferson was certainly not a "soldier of genius," 
but that he did all in his power to raise a defensive 
force of militia in the sorely drained State, as soon 
as he knew that the British ships were in the Chesa- 
peake, no one who reads his letters to General Nel- 
son or Baron Steuben or the county lieutenants can 
doubt: "That there may not be an instant's delay, 
let them come in detached parties, as they can be 
collected: every man who has arms bring them." 
The legislature adjourned January 2, in spite of his 
message to them the day before asking their advice. 
The members of the council went to their homes. 



JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 85 

Jefferson was left alone to cope with the situation. 
He spent over eighty hours in the saddle ("prancing 
to and fro")> directing measures of safety which 
were wise and necessary. The militia, dispersed 
over a large tract of country, with wretched equip- 
ment and inadequate means of transportation, came 
in but slowly. Jefferson wrote to the president of 
Congress later that on the day the enemy reached 
Richmond "only 200 [militiaj were embodied. They 
were of this town and too few to do anything." As 
the militia increased the enemy withdrew. "To 
what place they will point their next exertions we 
cannot conjecture," wrote Jefferson to Congress: 
"The whole country on the tide-waters and some 
distance from them is equally open to similar in- 
sult." 

As to the "warning" Jefferson received from 
Washington, it was only a general circular letter 
sent to the various executives, and not at all, as 
Marshall's language implies, a special message to 
Jefferson that Virginia was about to be attacked. 
In fact, Washington had no idea what the destina- 
tion of the rumored "embarkation" was. He wrote 
Baron Steuben on December 10: "It is reported 
from New York that the enemy are about to make 
another detachment . . . their destination conjec- 
tured to be southward." Certainly not a very ur- 
gent warning to the man who commanded the mili- 
tary forces of the State, under the governor, and 



86 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

who was responsible for such defense as it could of- 
fer in case of invasion. 

But the final justification of Jefferson's conduct is 
in the approbation of the commander-in-chief him- 
self. Washington was not slow to discover and re- 
buke the slightest dereliction of duty. His wrath 
fell like a thunderbolt on everything that he con- 
sidered cowardice or "culpable remissness." Yet he 
wrote Jefferson a few weeks after Arnold's invasion 
as follows: "It is mortifying to see so inconsiderable 
a party committing such extensive depradations 
with impunity, but considering the situation of 
your State, it is a matter of wonder that you have 
hitherto suffered so little molestation. I am appre- 
hensive you will experience more in the future; nor 
should I be surprised if the enemy were to establish 
a post in Virginia till the season for opening the 
campaign here. But as the evils you have to ap- 
prehend from these predatory excursions are not to 
be compared to the common cause from the con- 
quest of the States to the southward of you, I am 
persuaded the attention to your immediate safety 
will not divert you from the measures intended to 
stop the progress of the enemy in that quarter. 
The late accession of force makes them too power- 
ful to be resisted without powerful succors from 
Virginia, and it is certainly her policy, as well as 
the interest of America, to keep the weight of war 
at a distance from her. There is no doubt that a 



JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 87 

principal object of Arnold's operations is to make 
a diversion in favor of Cornwallis, and to remove 
this motive by disappointing the intention will be 
one of the surest ways of removing the enemy.' ' 
A few days later, in a letter to Baron Steuben, 
Washington acknowledged that the evil which Vir- 
ginia had suffered was a natural result of the sub- 
stantial aid which the State was furnishing to Gen- 
eral Greene in the South, and begged that Steuben 
would do everything in his power "to make the 
defence of the State interfere as little as possible 
with an object of so much the more importance as 
the danger is so much the greater." Washington 
was a son of Virginia, too. 

Whether Greene would have been able after Guil- 
ford Court House to keep the whole South from 
submission to Cornwallis without the aid sent by 
Virginia is doubtful. The "northern bretheren" 
did not help. In fact the armies of North and 
South had little common direction. Washington, 
intent to the last on driving the British from New 
York, had to leave the Southern commanders to 
get on as best they could, and very often had only 
the most scanty and belated news of their fortunes. 
Both Gates and Greene looked to Virginia rather 
than to New York for help. Both corresponded 
freely with Jefferson, begging for men and supplies. 
Seven hundred Virginia militiamen joined Greene's 
little army before the battle at the Cowpens (Janu- 



88 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ary 17, 1781), and a thousand more the next month. 
Six hundred stand of arms went through Richmond 
for Greene on February 22, followed by lead, car- 
tridges, bread, and blankets. Greene, though some- 
times nervously importunate in his demands on 
Jefferson, wrote to Washington of his great gratitude 
for the aid from the protecting State of the South. 
Cornwallis himself confessed to his superior, Clin- 
ton, that his "hold on the Carolinas must be diffi- 
cult if not precarious until Virginia is in a manner 
subdued." When, therefore, the British commander 
left Greene in the Carolinas and struck north into 
Virginia to put an end to the chief source of Greene's 
supplies, he found a State crippled in the defense 
of its neighbors. "An enemy 3000 strong," wrote 
Jefferson to Congress, "not a regular in the State, 
nor arms to put into the hands of the militia, are 
indeed discouraging circumstances." 

As the spring of 1781 advanced it became evident 
that the issue was to be fought out on the soil of 
Virginia. With reinforcements from Clinton's army 
in the North, Cornwallis had about seven thousand 
infantry and cavalry in the State by the end of May, 
while his privateers, besides ravaging the shores, 
were effectively preventing the co-operation of the 
militia in the counties lying on the navigable rivers. 
Washington had detached Lafayette from the 
Northern army early in April, but rather to support 
the Southern States in general than to defend Vir- 



JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 89 

ginia in particular. In fact, Lafayette was to "ad- 
vise Governor Jefferson " of his intended march 
through the State of Virginia to reinforce Greene's 
army. But when Lafayette reached Virginia he 
found the enemy there. The summer's campaign, 
conducted at first by Lafayette and Steuben, and 
finally drawing in Washington, Rochambeau, and 
the French fleet for the denouement at Yorktown, 
we shall not describe. Before it had proceeded 
many days Jefferson's term of office came to a 
close, and we might let it come to a close in silence, 
if it were not that accusations of remissness and 
cowardice pursued him to the end. 

Morse says that when Cornwallis reached Peters- 
burg " Jefferson could devise nothing better than to 
implore Washington to hasten to Virginia's rescue." 
This is what Jefferson actually wrote to Washington 
over a week after Cornwallis reached Petersburg: 
"The whole force of the enemy within this State, 
from the best intelligence I have been able to get, is 
I think about 7000 men, infantry and cavalry. . . . 
Your Excellency will judge, from what you know of 
our country, what it may probably suffer during 
the present campaign. . . . Were it possible for 
this circumstance to justify in your Excellency a 
determination to lend us your personal aid, it is 
evident from the universal voice, that the presence 
of their beloved countrymen . . . would restore 
full confidence of salvation and would render them 



90 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

equal to whatever is not impossible. I cannot un- 
dertake to foresee and obviate the difficulties which 
lie in the way of such a resolution. The whole sub- 
ject is before you, of which I see only detached 
parts, and your judgment will be formed on the 
view of the whole. ... I have undertaken to hint 
this matter to your Excellency not only on my own 
sense of its importance to us, but at the solicitation 
of many members of weight in our Legislature." 
This is what Morse, with characteristic misrepre- 
sentation of Jefferson's spirit, calls "imploring" 
Washington to come to Virginia's rescue. 

At the close of the letter just quoted Jefferson 
expressed his gratification in the rapid approach of 
the day which should end his term of office as gov- 
ernor. Though eligible for a third term, he had re- 
solved to retire to private life, believing that " under 
the pressure of the invasion under which we were 
then laboring the public would have more confidence 
in a military chief." However, when the day for 
Jefferson's retirement arrived (June 2) no successor 
had been chosen. Cornwallis's advance into Vir- 
ginia had thrown the legislature into a kind of 
panic. They adjourned when he approached Rich- 
mond (May 10), and twice again within the month. 
They sought refuge in Charlottesville, and when 
Tarleton's raid drove them out of there, they fled 
to Staunton, west of the Blue Ridge. Again the 
report of Tarleton's approach precipitated a panic 



JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 91 

(June 10), and the legislature, after passing a reso- 
lution that the speaker might call a meeting when 
and where he pleased, again broke up and dispersed. 
Many were in favor of appointing Patrick Henry 
dictator in the crisis. Jefferson, who characterized 
the move as "treason against the people," says that 
the proposition "wanted a few votes only of being 
passed." During all this excitement Jefferson con- 
tinued to perform the duties of governor in a kind 
of unofficial interregnum. When the agitation over 
the dictatorship calmed down and the legislature 
regained its poise, he surrendered the reins of gov- 
ernment into the hands of his successor, General 
Thomas Nelson. 1 

It was, strictly speaking, therefore, as a private 
citizen that Jefferson suffered the indignity of being 
driven from his house at Monticello by Tarleton's 
troopers, and of having his neighboring plantation 
of Elk Hill visited with all the fury of war's desola- 
tion and insolence. In the early morning of June 4, 
1781, a messenger brought Jefferson word at Monti- 
cello that Tarleton's men were on the way to Char- 
lottesville, where the legislature was in session. 
Several members of the legislature, including the 
speakers of both Houses, were Jefferson's guests at 

1 General Nelson was one of the wealthiest and bravest of Vir- 
ginia's sons. His old family mansion was within the British lines 
at Yorktown, and actually occupied by British officers. During the 
siege Washington wished to spare the house from bombardment, 
but Nelson proudly refused the favor. 



92 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

the time. After breakfast they went down to Char- 
lottesville, where the assembly met and hastily ad- 
journed, while Jefferson sent his wife and children to 
the home of Colonel Coles, some fifteen miles away, 
and busied himself securing his most important pa- 
pers. He ordered his groom to have his horse ready 
at a point on the road to Carter's Mountain, but 
seeing no signs of the British in the streets of Char- 
lottesville when he went out to reconnoitre with his 
telescope, he started back to the house to put a few 
last papers in order. By a lucky chance he discov- 
ered that he had lost his light "walking sword' ' 
from its sheath when he kneeled down to level his 
telescope; for on his return to the spot to pick it up 
he looked again in the direction of Charlottesville 
and saw the streets filled with Tarleton's dragoons. 
Jefferson then sprang on his horse and rode away 
to safety. Had he gone back to the house, as he 
intended, he would have fallen directly into the 
hands of Captain McLeod, whom Tarleton had sent 
ahead "to seize Mr. Jefferson and occupy Monti- 
cello as a look-out." McLeod was actually in pos- 
session of the house when Jefferson turned back, 
and he remained there for eighteen hours, depart- 
ing, be it said to his credit, without injury to prop- 
erty or persons. 

Far different, however, was Tarleton's behavior 
at Jefferson's plantation of Elk Hill, which he passed 
on his way down the James to rejoin Cornwallis. 



JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 93 

Jefferson gives a heartrending description of Tarle- 
ton's wanton cruelty in a letter written to Doctor 
Gordon seven years later: "He remained ten days. 
... He destroyed all my growing crops of corn 
and tobacco; he burned all my barns . . . having 
first taken what corn he wanted. He used, as was 
to be expected, all my stock of cattle, sheep, and 
hogs for the sustenance of his army, and carried off 
all the horses capable of service; of those too young 
for service he cut the throats. He burned all the 
fences on the plantation so as to leave it an utter 
wreck. He carried off, also, about thirty slaves. 
Had this been to give them freedom he would have 
done right; but it was to consign them to inevitable 
death from smallpox and putrid fever then raging in 
his camp. He treated the rest of the neighborhood 
in somewhat the same style, but not with the spirit 
of total extermination with which he seemed to rage 
over my possessions. . . . History will never re- 
late the horrors committed by the British army in 
the Southern States of America. They raged in 
Virginia six months only . . . and I give you a 
faithful specimen of their transactions for ten days 
of that time, and on one spot only. Ex pede Hercu- 
lem. I suppose their whole devastations during 
those six months amounted to about £3,000,000 
sterling. " 

Jefferson's narrow and fortunate escape from 
seizure by McLeod's troops at Monticello has been 



94 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

called by unfavorable biographers " running away 
from the British/ ' and the impression has been 
created in thousands of minds that it was cowardice 
and not prudence that dictated his behavior. Yet 
the mere statement of the facts shows how inevita- 
ble was the course which Jefferson took. Every one 
of his critics would have done the same thing in the 
same predicament. If anything, he was rashly 
courageous in staying too long in an exposed and 
defenseless position. In the panic which seized the 
State on Cornwallis's invasion, there was the usual 
nervous campaign of incrimination, the usual hunt 
for a political victim. Men began to blame the 
governor for his generosity. If he had kept the 
arms and soldiers in the State instead of sending 
them to reinforce Washington in the North and 
Greene in the South, Virginia would not now be 
lying prostrate under Tarleton's iron heel. If he 
had only spent the money to fortify the coast, raids 
like Arnold's could not have occurred. They forgot 
that Virginia never had enough and never could 
get enough money to protect her coast without a 
navy; and that even if her coast were impregnable it 
would not prevent Cornwallis from coming up from 
the Carolinas. They forgot that Virginia was best 
defended, in the opinion of her own greatest son, by 
checking the progress of the enemy in the States to 
the south. Now that this policy had failed and 
the enemy was upon them, somebody must have 



JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 95 

been guilty of a dereliction of duty. George Nicho- 
las, of Albemarle, rose in the House and accused 
Jefferson of not having acted with wisdom and de- 
cision at the time of Arnold's raid, and demanded 
an investigation of the facts by the legislature. 
How the legislature itself had acted, in panicky dis- 
solutions when Jefferson wanted its advice, he did 
not dwell on. Jefferson's supporters readily agreed 
to the investigation, and the hearing was set for 
December 19, 1781. 

Before the legislature met in the autumn Mr. 
Nicholas's colleague from Albemarle resigned his 
seat in Jefferson's favor, to put the ex-governor "on 
an equal ground for meeting the inquiry," and Jef- 
ferson was unanimously elected. On the day ap- 
pointed for the hearing he rose and declared himself 
ready to meet any charges and answer any inquiries 
that any member of the assembly chose to make. 
There was silence. A resume of the intended 
charges, answered point by point, had been prepared 
by Jefferson during the summer and sent to the 
members. It had convinced them all of his blame- 
lessness in his high office. The session that was set 
for an investigation of the executive's conduct was 
turned into a meeting of testimony to his virtues. 
Both House and Senate passed by a unanimous vote 
the resolution, "That the sincere thanks of the 
General Assembly be given to our former governor 
Thomas Jefferson, for his impartial, upright, and at- 



96 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

tentive administration whilst in office. The Assem- 
bly wish, in the strongest manner to declare the high 
opinion which they entertain of Mr. Jefferson's 
ability, rectitude, and integrity as chief magistrate 
of this Commonwealth, and mean by thus publicly 
avowing their opinion to obviate and remove all 
unmerited censure." 

The commendation bestowed by Washington on 
Jefferson's administration of the State of Virginia 
was no less hearty. In a letter written to Jefferson 
on June 8, 1781, the commander-in-chief says: 
"Allow me, before I take leave of your Excellency 
in your public capacity, to express the obligations 
I am under for the readiness and zeal with which 
you have always forwarded and supported every 
measure which I have had occasion to recommend 
through you, and to assure you that I shall esteem 
myself honored by a continuation of your friendship 
and correspondence, should your country permit 
you to remain in the private walk of life." This 
unqualified and generous praise Mr. Morse calls 
"some courteous words" at the close of a letter 
which Washington had found occasion to write to 
Jefferson, giving the latter "a sort of certificate of 
good character." "With such comfort as he could 
find in these testimonials," continues Morse, "Jef- 
ferson withdrew to private life. . . . Altogether 
he had had decidedly hard fortune." 

Jefferson had indeed had "hard fortune." But 



JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 97 

hard fortune is no disgrace. He was a man of peace 
called to preside over a State inevitably exposed to 
the most exasperating form of war. He was a man 
of extreme sensitiveness subjected to a criticism 
from old friends which was no less galling because it 
was undeserved. His domestic life was saddened 
by the death of an infant daughter in April, 1781, 
and the steady deterioration of his frail wife's health. 
Not all of his measures as governor may have been 
the wisest. He might, as Eckenrode suggests, have 
requisitioned tobacco, flour, and beef in the State, 
to purchase arms and ammunition in France. But 
when British cruisers were swarming in Chesapeake 
Bay and hovering over the shores of Virginia with 
menace of fire and plunder, it is difficult to see how 
Jefferson could have either got the tobacco to 
France or the arms into Virginia. The French fleet 
could not be enlisted in any permanent defense of 
our shores. At most they would come up from the 
West Indies to participate in some strategic move 
against the British. They hardly helped us at all 
until the Yorktown campaign — but there their help 
meant victory. 

The single official act of his governorship that 
gave Jefferson unalloyed satisfaction was the signing 
of the resolution of the Virginia Legislature trans- 
ferring the western territory, which was Virginia's 
by the double claim of charter and conquest, to the 
government of the United States. On January 2, 



98 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

1781, the very day that the definite news of Arnold's 
approach reached Richmond, the legislature, before 
its hasty adjournment, ceded the territory north of 
the Ohio to the United States, on condition that the 
States should ratify the Articles of Confederation. 
Jefferson transmitted the resolution to the president 
of Congress, expressing the hope that "the other 
States of the Union, equally impressed with the 
necessity of that important convention [the Arti- 
cles of Confederation] shall be willing to sacrifice 
equally to its completion. This single event [con- 
federation], could it take place shortly, would 
overweigh every success which the enemy have 
hitherto obtained, and render desperate the hopes 
to which those successes have given birth." Vir- 
ginia's splendid example won the cause. Within 
two months the last State, Maryland, signed the 
Articles, and the United States had its first Con- 
stitution in black on white. 

The Northwest Territory thus ceded by Virginia 
was the beginning of the magnificent public domain 
of the United States, which, during the next two 
generations, through cessions by the States, pur- 
chase from France, treaty with England, conquest 
from Mexico, was extended to the Pacific coast; and 
whose political organization, economic development, 
and social amalgamation have exercised the most 
potent influence on the course of American history. 
By the transfer of the Northwest Territory, as gov- 



JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 99 

ernor of Virginia, and the purchase of the Louisiana 
Territory, as President of the United States, Thomas 
Jefferson set his seal to the acquisition of a national 
domain imperial in extent and exhaustless in wealth; 
by his plan of government for the territory west of 
the Alleghanies in 1784 and his despatch of Lewis 
and Clark to the Pacific coast twenty years later, he 
stamped his name on our great Western wilderness 
and his ideas on all our subsequent territorial policy. 
Jefferson retired from the governorship in the 
midsummer of 1781 under the double cloud of official 
criticism and domestic anxiety. He was a man 
singularly free his life long from feelings of resent- 
ment or revenge. Yet the sense of his imputed 
failure in the highest office within the gift of his 
" countrymen " lingered for many months to em- 
bitter a heart racked with the pain of watching its 
dearest treasure slowly stolen away by the inexora- 
ble hand of death. He believed that he had done 
with public life forever. The thought of office al- 
most sickened him. He declined an appointment 
by Congress in June, 1781, to join Adams, Franklin, 
Jay, and Laurens in Europe to represent the United 
States in a proposed peace congress at Vienna. He 
refused an election to Congress by the Virginia 
legislature in December. To his kinsman, Edmund 
Randolph, he wrote from Monticello: "I have re- 
tired to my farm, my family, and my books, from 
which I think nothing will evermore separate me. 



100 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

A desire to leave public office with a reputation not 
more blotted than it has deserved will oblige me to 
emerge at the next session of our assembly and 
perhaps to accept a seat in it, but as I go with a 
single object I shall withdraw when that shall be 
concluded." 1 His intimate friends, Madison and 
Monroe, both tried to coax him from the tent of 
Achilles. The former thought that his "keen sensi- 
bility" (sensitiveness) was not "dictated either by 
philosophy or patriotism," and Monroe frankly told 
him that his conduct was provoking murmurs. But 
still Jefferson persevered in his course of "obstinate 
condolement." He could have comforted himself, 
he writes Monroe, "under the disapprobation of the 
well-meaning but uninformed people," but the mis- 
trust of their enlightened representatives, letting 
him "stand for months arraigned of treason of the 
heart" as well as "weakness of the head," was a 
"wound in his spirit which could only be cured by 
the all-healing grave." This distressing period of 
morbid reflection on past chagrin and mortal anxiety 
for what the next day might bring forth passed with 
the death of Mrs. Jefferson, early in September, 
1782. That great baptism of sorrow swept away all 
lesser memories of ill, and Jefferson was ready when 
his country called him a few weeks later to a post of 
honor and service. 

1 Referring, of course, to the proposed examination of his conduct 
by the legislature, set for December 19, 1781. Jefferson's letter to 
Randolph was written in September. 



CHAPTER V 
THE MISSION TO FRANCE 

/ do love this people with all my heart, and think that with a better 
religion, a better form of Government and their present governors their 
condition and Country would be most enviable. (Jefferson to Mrs. John 
Adams, June 21, 1785.) 

The surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown put an 
end to the American Revolution. On March 5, 1782, 
the British Parliament authorized the ministry to 
make peace, and a fortnight later Lord North, who 
had been at the head of the government for twelve 
years, resigned the seals to the Marquis of Rock- 
ingham, the liberal Whig under whom the Stamp 
Act had been repealed in 1766. Rockingham died 
in July, but his successor, Lord Shelburne, carried 
on his policy of a friendly consideration of American 
claims. Benjamin Franklin was at the head of our 
peace commission in Paris, with Jay, Adams, and 
Laurens as his colleagues. They were all able men, 
but the negotiations halted a bit. Franklin was 
seventy-six years old and not in the best of health. 
Jay and Adams had to leave their respective diplo- 
matic posts in Madrid and Amsterdam to take part 
in the discussions in Paris, while Laurens was cap- 
tured by the English on the voyage to Europe and 
held a prisoner in the Tower of London until the 

101 



102 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

conferences were nearly over. Congress thought it 
wise to add to the commission a member fresh from 
America, acquainted at first hand with the condi^ 
tions of the later years of the war; and their unani- 
mous choice fell on Jefferson. The appointment 
reached him at Monticello, November 25, 1782, and 
he immediately accepted it, not only as a rare op- 
portunity for public service, but as a relief from the 
brooding sorrow of his great affliction. His passion 
for art, music, science, and philosophy heightened 
the anticipation of companionship with the noted 
men of culture whose names graced the intellectual 
capital of the world in the latter days of the old 
regime in France. Paris was his Mecca. 

Jefferson left Monticello for Philadelphia in De- 
cember. The French minister, Luzerne, offered him 
passage on the frigate Romulus, on which Jefferson's 
friend and late visitor to Monticello, the Marquis de 
Chastellux, 1 was also to sail. But Jefferson's view 
of the towers of Notre Dame and the courts of the^ 
Louvre was destined to still further postponement. 
While the Romulus lay a few miles below Baltimore, 
blocked by the ice and fearful of the British cruisers 

1 De Chastellux (1734-88) was one of the French generals in the 
American Revolution, and a member of the Academie frangaise. He 
published his Travels in the Southern States of America in 1788. We 
are indebted to Chastellux for one of the most charming descriptions 
of Jefferson in retirement at Monticello in the spring of 1782: "A 
man not yet forty, tall and with a mild and pleasing countenance, 
but whose mind and understanding are ample substitutes for every 
exterior grace. An American who, without ever having quitted his 
own country, is at once a musician, skilled in drawing, a geometrician 



THE MISSION TO FRANCE 103 

that were reported off the capes of Chesapeake Bay, 
word arrived that the preliminaries of peace had 
been signed in Paris. There was, then, no further 
immediate need for Jefferson's services abroad, 
though he remained in Philadelphia, his mission 
" suspended" only, until Congress should have 
assurance that everything was proceeding smoothly 
toward the final peace. On April 1, 1783, Congress 
thanked Jefferson for the readiness with which he 
had undertaken "a service which from the present 
situation of affairs" they "apprehend can be dis- 
pensed with," and by the middle of May he was 
back at Monticello. 

But not for long. Just three weeks after his 
arrival home he was elected by the Virginia legisla- 
ture, with his friend James Monroe and three other 
colleagues, to serve for the next ensuing term of 
Congress. The impotence and ignominy of that 
body at the close of the Revolution were notorious. 
Our debt was huge, the continental currency was 
worthless, and Congress had no competency to lay 
taxes. The States were quarrelling over boundaries 
and tariff reprisals, while Congress had no adequate 

and astronomer, a natural philosopher, legislator, and statesman. 
A Senator of America, who sat for two years in that famous Con- 
gress which brought about the Revolution ... a Governor of 
Virginia, who filled that difficult station during the recent invasions 
of Arnold, of Phillips, and of Cornwallis. . . . Sometimes natural 
philosophy, at others politics or the arts were the topics of our con- 
versation, for no object had escaped Mr. Jefferson; and it seemed as 
if from his youth he had placed his mind, as he had his house, on 
an elevated situation from which he might contemplate the universe." 



104 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

machinery either for the settlement of their quarrels 
with one another or the enforcement of their obedi- 
ence to the central power. Foreign nations were 
naturally sceptical about reposing confidence in a 
government which could not win the confidence of 
its own States, and diplomats in Paris, London, and 
Madrid blandly asked whether they were expected 
to make treaties with thirteen American nations or 
one. The army was unpaid and mutinous. "They 
have swords in their hands," wrote Gouverneur 
Morris to Jay, "and you know enough of the history 
of mankind to know much more than I have said." 
The dignified and pathetic appeal of Washington 
himself quelled the insubordination of the officers 
at Newburgh, in March, 1783, but a few months 
later eighty men of a Pennsylvania regiment, raw 
recruits whose pay was in arrears, marched on 
Philadelphia declaring that they would "have their 
rights" from Congress. They swaggered through 
the streets with a good deal of harmless bluster, 
which was turned into riot and ribaldry when they 
"found their unerring way to the wine-bottles and 
ale-casks of hospitable Philadelphia." Congress 
protested against this insult to its dignity by with- 
drawing from the city and the State. It established 
itself first in Princeton, New Jersey, then moved to 
Trenton, and finally to Annapolis, Maryland. 

It was at Trenton that Jefferson found Congress 
and took his seat, November 4, 1783. That same 



THE MISSION TO FRANCE 105 

day the body adjourned to meet at Annapolis three 
weeks later. But so insignificant had Congress be- 
come that a majority of the States, necessary to 
constitute a house for any kind of business, were 
not represented in Annapolis before the middle of 
December. Jefferson sat only from December until 
the following May, but these five months were full 
of activity. His name was at the head of most of 
the important committees and his pen was in con- 
stant requisition. He wrote the reply which the 
president of Congress made to General Washington 
when the latter laid down the command of the 
army which he had so wonderfully led for eight 
years. He took up Gouverneur Morris's suggestion 
for a decimal system of coinage, substituting our 
dollar for Morris's absurd unit of 1-1440 of a dollar, 
and advocating the extension of the decimal system 
to all our tables of weights and measures — a service 
for which school children and teachers, clerks and 
merchants, "the mason, the shipwright, and the 
carpenter/' the "butcher, the baker, and the can- 
dlestick-maker" will all gladly join in erecting a 
monument to him when the present complicated 
and stupid tables are abolished. 

The treaty of peace with Great Britain came be- 
fore Congress in December, 1783, but it was not 
until the middle of January that representatives 
from the nine States necessary for its ratification 
could be secured. Several members of Congress 



106 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

were in favor of ratifying by the vote of seven 
States only, trusting that the British Government 
might not detect the harmless fraud — an eloquent 
testimony both to the members' own regard for the 
sanctity of the law of their country and to their 
estimate of its importance in the eyes of foreign 
nations. Jefferson discountenanced this plan as "a 
dishonorable prostitution of our seal." 1 Delegates 
from Connecticut and South Carolina arrived at 
last, and on January 14, 1784, Jefferson had the 
satisfaction of setting his name to the ratification 
of the treaty acknowledging the Declaration of In- 
dependence which he had drafted seven and a half 
years before. Other signers of the Declaration who 
were present in Congress to participate in the rati- 
fication were Roger Sherman, Elbridge Gerry, Rob- 
ert Morris, and William Ellery. 

By far the most important of Jefferson's many 
services, however, during the few months of his 
attendance at Congress was the drafting of a plan 

1 Jefferson had been appointed on July 4, 1776, on a committee 
with Franklin and Adams to prepare a device for a seal for the 
United States. Each of the three members of the committee sug- 
gested a device, Jefferson's being the most elaborate. But Congress 
was too critical or too busy (although further designs were submitted 
in 1779 and 1780) to decide on the seal until the close of the war. 
On June 20, 1782, the great seal of the United States was adopted 
from a design sent over from England by our minister, John Adams, 
and furnished to him, it is said, by Sir John Prestwich, Baronet, who 
was a friend of America in the Revolution. A most interesting illus- 
trated article in Harper's Magazine for July, 1856, describes the 
genesis of the great seal, and the reproductions show the great 
superiority of Jefferson's design to the one adopted. 



THE MISSION TO FRANCE 107 

for the government of our western territory. Vir- 
ginia's cession of the territory north and west of the 
Ohio, which we mentioned near the close of the last 
chapter, was completed on March 1, 1784. Jeffer- 
son was appointed with Chase, of Maryland, and 
Howell, of Rhode Island, to prepare a plan for its 
temporary government. Without waiting for the 
other States with western claims to cede their lands 
beyond the Alleghanies, Jefferson drew up and re- 
ported an " Ordinance for the government of the 
Western Territory of the United States." The 
draft of the ordinance in Jefferson's handwriting is 
in the archives of the State Department at Wash- 
ington. It provided for the division of the whole 
territory between the Alleghanies and the Missis- 
sippi, into "States" by degrees of latitude and 
meridians of longitude. Each " State," as soon as 
it should have " acquired 20,000 free inhabitants," 
should be authorized by Congress to establish a 
permanent constitution and government for itself, 
which must conform to the following principles : 

(1) It must forever remain a part of this Confed- 

eration of the United States of America. 

(2) Its powers, property, and territory must be 

subject to the government of the United 
States in Congress assembled. 

(3) It must pay the part of the federal debts con- 

tracted or to be contracted which was 
apportioned to it by Congress. 



108 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

(4) Its government must be republican in form 

and admit no person to be a citizen who 
holds any hereditary title. 

(5) Slavery should not exist in any of the " States" 

after the year 1800 of the Christian era. 

Whenever any of these new States gained as 
many inhabitants as the least populous of the 
thirteen original States, its delegates should be ad- 
mitted to Congress "on an equal footing with the 
said original States, provided nine States agreed to 
such admission." Until then they should have a 
representative in Congress with the right of debat- 
ing but not of voting. 

The student of our political institutions will rec- 
ognize in this ordinance of Jefferson's all the essen- 
tial principles of the organization and government 
of Territories of the United States. Since the year 
1910 Territorial governments within our country 
proper have ceased; an unbroken band of forty-eight 
States extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 
But from the Virginia cession of 1784 down to the 
Civil War at least one-half of the area of the United 
States was in the form of Territories, and the recip- 
rocal influence of the old States on the new Territo- 
ries and the new Territories on the old States has 
been one of the most important of the political and 
social chapters of American history. In the light of 
these facts Jefferson's Ordinance for the government 
of the West takes on a great significance. Its provi- 



THE MISSION TO FRANCE 109 

sions were copied largely in the famous Northwest 
Ordinance of 1787 and in the Constitution of the 
United States. Its spirit influenced our Territorial 
governments for more than a century. 

Jefferson's Ordinance was not adopted in toto, 
however. The fantastic names which he suggested 
for the new Western States were dropped; the clause 
forbidding the holder of an hereditary title to be- 
come a citizen was stricken out; and the provision 
for the abolition of slavery after the year 1800 was 
defeated. Only the three States of South Carolina, 
Maryland, and Virginia actually voted against the 
no-slavery clause; but Georgia and Delaware had 
no delegates at all in Congress at the time, New 
Jersey's vote was lost because she had only a single 
delegate present, and North Carolina's because her 
two delegates were paired. So there remained but 
the six States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, 
Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, and Penn- 
sylvania in support of the clause. One more dele- 
gate in attendance from New Jersey, or the change 
of one vote of the Virginia or North Carolina dele- 
gation would have given the vote of the seventh 
State necessary to make the majority. 

It is doubtful if a vote fraught with more serious 
consequences for the subsequent history of our 
country has ever been passed by the Congress of 
the United States than this rejection of a no-slavery 
clause in the plan of government for our Western 



110 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

territory. Had the clause been adopted and ob- 
served, the territory south of the Ohio as well as 
that to the north would have been organized as free 
soil. The next fifteen years would not have seen 
the admission of Kentucky (1792) and Tennessee 
(1796) as slave States, and the organization of the 
huge Mississippi Territory (1798) with slavery. 
The invention of the cotton-gin and the consequent 
hunger for new slave soil was still a decade off when 
Jefferson's clause was rejected. A broad band of 
free soil might have extended from the Lakes to the 
Gulf, shutting slavery up in the original States of 
the South along the Atlantic, and presenting a solid 
front of freedom on the Mississippi. Instead, the 
sectional antagonism in the old States was carried 
out to the frontier, there to kindle a struggle for the 
possession of every new acquisition of territory. 
The Civil War is latent in the vote of 1784. Abra- 
ham Lincoln and the Republican party came back 
to the rejected clause of Jefferson's Ordinance for 
their platform: no slavery in the Territories of the 
United States. Jefferson expressed his disappoint- 
ment mildly to Madison in a letter of April 25: 
"South Carolina, Maryland, and! Virginia! voted 
against it"; but to his French friend, De Meusnier, 
he poured out his indignant sorrow: "The voice of a 
single individual would have prevented this abomi- 
nable crime from spreading itself over the new coun- 
try. Thus we see the fate of millions unborn hang- 



THE MISSION TO FRANCE 111 

ing on the tongue of one man, and heaven was silent 
in that awful moment." 

With the advent of peace and the acknowledg- 
ment of our independence it became necessary for us 
to win a respected place in the family of nations. 
Our commerce had been monopolized by England 
to such an extent that we had had little opportu- 
nity of showing to other European nations the 
reciprocal advantages that would result from an 
exchange of goods. John Adams declared in his 
later days that he could not read the British Acts of 
Trade as a young lawyer "without pronouncing a 
hearty curse upon them ... as a humiliation, a 
degradation, and a disgrace" to his country. But 
the British acts were not exceptionally severe. On 
the contrary, they were rather more liberal than 
those of most European countries. Free trade was 
a thing unknown in the eighteenth century. Every 
land surrounded itself with tariff walls and tried to 
monopolize its colonies' products. So long as we 
were a part of the great British Empire we enjoyed 
the benefits of her colonial monopoly, in spite of 
the exasperating acts arising from the enforcement of 
that monopoly, and our products found good mar- 
kets and favorable tariff discriminations within the 
Empire. But when we became an independent na- 
tion we found ourselves outside the protective sys- 
tem of Great Britain, without thereby being ad- 
mitted to the privileges of trade with the other 



112 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

countries of the Old World. We were independent, 
but alone. We were known as " successful rebels," 
but not as good customers. We had, to be sure, 
made a fairly favorable treaty of commerce with 
France in 1778, but the grip of monopoly and privi- 
lege on the old regime prevented Louis XVI's min- 
isters from putting it into operation. Holland and 
Sweden also had made commercial treaties with us 
during the war and so opened a modest opportunity 
for the " economic invasion" of Europe by our fish 
and rice, our lumber, whale-oil, tobacco, and wheat. 
But Great Britain refused to open to the United 
States the trade with the West Indies which we had 
enjoyed as British colonies. She even refused to 
put us on the footing of "the most favored nation" 
in our trade with the home land. We had no trade 
agreements, hence no security of commerce, with 
Russia, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Tus- 
cany, Naples, Venice, Rome, Turkey, Morocco, Al- 
giers — in short, with hardly any of the maritime 
nations of the Old World. 

Congress decided in the spring of 1784 to make &n 
effort to break down the protective barriers in 
Europe. On May 7 it resolved that "a minister 
plenipotentiary be appointed to active conjunction 
with Mr. Adams and Doctor Franklin in negotiating 
treaties of commerce with foreign nations." The 
choice of Congress fell on Jefferson. It was his 
fourth invitation since the Declaration of Indepen- 



THE MISSION TO FRANCE 113 

dence to go to Paris on a public mission. And this 
time he was not to be disappointed. As the ap- 
pointment was for only two years, he left his younger 
daughter and his nephews at home, taking only his 
eldest daughter, Martha, who since Mrs. Jefferson's 
death had become his inseparable companion. He 
left Annapolis for Philadelphia and Boston four days 
after his appointment. " While passing through the 
different States," he says in his Memoir, "I made a 
point of informing myself of the state of commerce 
in each, went on to New Hampshire with the same 
view, and returned to Boston." He was enthusias- 
tically received in Boston, where, as he wrote Gerry, 
much of his time was " occupied by the hospitality 
and civilities of this place." A guest's chair was 
provided for him in the general court of Massa- 
chusetts. He sailed for Europe on Monday, July 5, 
in the Ceres, and as his ship dropped down the har- 
bor, through its emerald islands, she was wafted on 
her way by the cheers of thousands of patriots 
gathered in Faneuil Hall, the " Cradle of Liberty," 
to listen to the annual oration on the text of his 
immortal Declaration. A pleasant voyage of nine- 
teen days brought the Ceres to Cowes, where Jeffer- 
son was detained by the illness of his daughter. 
He reached Paris early in August. " Immediately 
called on Doctor Franklin at Passy," he writes, 
"communicated to him our charge, and we wrote 
to Mr. Adams, then at the Hague, to join us." 



114 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

As soon as the plenipotentiaries were all together 
in Paris they drew up the general form of a commer- 
cial treaty on a plan proposed by Jefferson and re- 
flecting his humanitarian principles. This treaty 
has seldom received its due notice at the hands of 
historians, because, unfortunately, instead of being 
written into the law of nations, it was consigned to 
the archives of the diplomatic correspondence of the 
United States. Washington called it "the most 
original and liberal treaty ever negotiated/ ' and 
declared that it would open "a new sera in negotia- 
tion/ ^ Some of its twenty-seven articles reveal 
the inhuman practices which prevailed even among 
friendly nations toward the close of the eighteenth 
century. 1 Others run far in advance of the position 
yet reached by nations that call themselves civilized, 
in the delimitation of the inevitable horrors of war 
and in the protection of the rights of neutrals. The 
coasts of the enemy were not to be ravaged, priva- 
teering was forbidden, non-combatants on land and 
sea were not to be molested, neutral property was 
not to be confiscated. "It seems a mockery of 
noble endeavor/ ' says James Parton in his enter- 
taining biography of Jefferson, "that such a draft 
should have been placed on record on the eve of 

1 The articles, for example, providing that mariners who were 
shipwrecked should not be plundered, and that "when subjects or 
citizens of one party shall die within the jurisdiction of the other," 
their bodies "shall be decently buried and protected from violence 
or disturbance." 



THE MISSION TO FRANCE 115 

wars which desolated Europe for twenty years, dur- 
ing which every principle of humanity and right was 
ruthlessly trampled under foot." So the moralist of 
to-day might view the noble labors of The Hague 
conferences and Lake Mohonk peace meetings ! 

John Adams was appointed minister to England 
in February, 1785, and the aged Franklin was re- 
lieved of the burden of his diplomatic post at Paris 
a few weeks later. Jefferson was appointed minister 
to France in Franklin's place, for a period of three 
years from March 10, 1785. He entered on his 
mission with the best of auguries for its success with 
the French Court — a neatly turned phrase. "You 
replace Doctor Franklin, I hear/' said the foreign 
minister, Vergennes. "I succeed him," replied 
Jefferson; "nobody could replace him." 

There is little that is exciting or even picturesque 
in the strictly official life of Jefferson in his four 
years residence in Paris. He says himself: "My 
duties at Paris were confined to a few objects, the 
receipt of our whale-oils, salted fish, and salted meats 
on favorable terms, the admission of our rice on 
equal terms with that of Piedmont, Egypt, and the 
Levant, a mitigation of the monopolies of our to- 
bacco by the Farmers-General, and a free admission 
of our productions into their islands." He found 
the foreign minister, Vergennes, "frank, honorable, 
and easy of access," though he had the reputation 
with the diplomatic corps at Paris of being "wary 



116 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

and slippery." But frank and honorable as Ver- 
gennes might be, he did not advance far on the way 
of commercial confidence in the new American na- 
tion. 1 Jefferson returned again and again to his 
assault on the privileges of the tobacco monopolists 
and the salt ring. "His diplomatic correspondence 
with Vergennes and Montmorin," says Morse, 
" fairly reeks with the flavor of whale-oil, salt-fish, 
and tobacco. " He declared that his countrymen 
were ready and eager to buy French goods if they 
could only find the return market in France for 
their own. He drew up statistics to show that 
King Louis would gain, as well as the American 
government, by breaking up the monopoly of the 
farmers-general and collecting his own royal im- 
posts directly on American importations. But it 
was of no avail. Vergennes confessed that he saw 
the force of Jefferson's arguments, but replied that 
the King received $28,000,000 a year from the Farm 
now, that this method of collecting the revenue 
"was of very ancient date, and that it was always 
hazardous to alter arrangements of long standing" 

1 In his Memoir, written nearly forty years later, Jefferson speaks 
of Vergennes and the French Government as "entirely disposed to 
befriend us on all occasions and to yield us every indulgence not ab- 
solutely injurious to themselves." But in a letter of January 30, 
1787, to Madison, he says of Vergennes: "He is a great minister in 
European affairs, but has a very imperfect idea of our institutions 
and no confidence in them. His devotion to the principles of pure 
despotism renders him unaffectionate to our governments [notice 
the plural!]. But his fear of England makes him value us as a 
makeweight." 



THE MISSION TO FRANCE 117 

— the doctrine which brought the throne of France 
down with a crash before another ten years passed ! 
Some few minor privileges for American com- 
merce Jefferson did gain by dint of persistent notes. 
Two new free ports were opened to American goods; 
duties were lowered somewhat in other ports and 
their collection made less annoying; whale-oil and 
spermaceti were allowed to come in with only the 
duty on their crude bulk, and pearl-ashes, beaver- 
skins, leather, ship-timber, and some minor articles 
were admitted free of duty. The farmers-general 
were ordered to purchase some of their tobacco in 
America, and a commission to encourage the impor- 
tation of American rice was promised. But this 
was the extent of our minister's success when, on 
August 6, 1787, he "received an intimation from 
the French government," as he wrote our foreign 
secretary, John Jay, "that it would be agreeable 
not to press our commercial regulations at that 
moment, the Ministry being too much occupied 
with the difficulties surrounding them to spare a 
moment on any subject that would admit of delay." 
The difficulties were gathering indeed. A comp- 
troller-general of the finances had announced the 
bankruptcy of the Court. The King had in vain 
summoned the notables to Versailles to help him 
out of the predicament. The Parlement refused to 
register the royal edicts of taxation, and letters 
were already prepared for the exile of its members 



118 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

in a body. The pains of the great Revolution had 
seized on France. 

In spite of the fact that the results of Jefferson's 
diplomacy were so meagre in comparison with his 
efforts, those efforts were by no means wasted. 
The files of our State Department contain no more 
striking examples of clear and accurate reasoning, 
of just reflection on international obligations, of 
illuminating estimate and analysis of the national 
psychology of a foreign people, than Jefferson's de- 
spatches from France. Even his enemy John Mar- 
shall admitted that Jefferson " quitted himself much 
to the public satisfaction" in his mission to France; 
and Daniel Webster declared that "Mr. Jefferson's 
discharge of his diplomatic duties was marked by 
great ability, diligence, and patriotism." In addi- 
tion to his labor for commercial concessions, Jeffer- 
son devoted much time to the improvement of the 
condition of our travellers, traders, and seamen 
actually in French ports. He completed a consular 
convention in 1788 which safeguarded the rights of 
visiting seamen. His private purse was often at 
the disposal of his embarrassed countrymen. His 
valuable time and legal advice were given without 
price and without stint to his fellow Americans in 
difficulty abroad. 

Nor were his activities confined to France alone. 
A most disgraceful state of affairs existed in the 
western Mediterranean. The "Barbary States" of 



THE MISSION TO FRANCE 119 

Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, combining 
fanatical religion with mundane greed, were waging 
a war of piracy against the maritime nations of 
Christendom. They held the keys to the Medi- 
terranean, and took tribute of Great Britain, France, 
Spain, Holland, Portugal, Venice, and Naples alike. 
America was expected to pay, too. An American 
brig, the Betsy, was seized and taken to Morocco in 
the spring of 1785, and its craw finally liberated only 
by the intervention of Spain. When asked by Jef- 
ferson with what right his people made war with 
an unoffending nation at peace with them, the 
Tripolitan envoy in London replied that it was 
"written in the Koran that all nations which had 
not acknowledged the Prophet [Mohammed] were 
sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the 
faithful to plunder and enslave." Outrageous as 
the depredations of these fanatical pirates were, the 
impotent government of the United States under 
the Articles of Confederation could not stop them. 
Jefferson was ordered to make a "present" of $20,000 
to the Dey of Algiers, the "King of Cruelties," and 
another of $20,000 to the Sultan of Morocco. Trip- 
oli demanded $150,000, with a tip of $15,000 for the 
ambassador, to guarantee a perpetual peace. We 
were reduced to bargaining with the monastic order 
of the Mathurins, who acted as emancipation bro- 
kers in the Barbary states, to get our sailors and 
captains ransomed at the best figures possible. 



120 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Indignant over the treatment of civilized peoples 
by these Mohammedan brigands, Jefferson tried to 
unite the maritime nations of western Europe in a 
league to enforce peace and security in the Mediter- 
ranean. A joint fleet of six frigates and as many 
smaller vessels was to be maintained by contribu- 
tions in proportion to benefits received. The direc- 
tion of the fleet was to proceed from Paris, under a 
committee of the resident ambassadors and minis- 
ters. Even in the case of war arising between par- 
ties to this league, it should not interrupt the work 
or hinder the parties from being "reputed at peace 
as to this enterprise." Several of the European 
states responded favorably to Jefferson's proposal, 
although the suspicion that either France or England 
might join with the pirate states against the league 
could not be wholly hidden. However, when Jef- 
ferson applied to Congress to initiate the scheme by 
the loan of a frigate and a contribution for its sup- 
port, the States refused to contribute and the whole 
plan fell through. Jefferson's ears were filled with 
the wails of American sailors unransomed in African 
prisons during the whole of his residence in France. 
Their doleful cries followed him home across the 
sea. As secretary of state he was still negotiating 
for them in 1793, and ten years later, as President 
of the United States, he sent our new navy to the 
Mediterranean to seek out the pirates in their own 
lair and scourge them into decency. 



THE MISSION TO FRANCE 121 

It is rather the unofficial activity of Jefferson dur- 
ing his French mission that enlists our interest. 
The stimulus to his receptive spirit of the opportu- 
nities of culture in Paris keyed his mind to a pitch 
of creative and versatile energy such as we have 
not seen in him before. His correspondence from 
France and in France is voluminous and varied. He 
revelled in pictures, sculpture, architecture, ma- 
chinery, books, plants, and seeds. He visited the 
provinces to get acquainted with the French peas- 
ant, writing from Nice to his friend Lafayette: 
"You must ferret the people out of their hovels as 
I have done, look into their kettles, eat their bread, 
loll on their beds under pretence of resting yourself, 
but in fact to find if they are soft." He got so ab- 
sorbed in a controversy with the celebrated Buffon 
over the natural history of the moose that he com- 
missioned his friend General Sullivan, of New 
Hampshire, to go into the woods and shoot a moose 
and send its bones and skin to Paris. The box ar- 
rived duly, with an incidental bill of expense amount- 
ing to thirty-six guineas. Buffon was convinced. 

Soon after his arrival in Paris, before he had suc- 
ceeded to Franklin's place as minister, Jefferson won 
his admission into the literary circle by the publi- 
cation of his Notes on Virginia, the only one of his 
compositions to rise out of the class of pamphlets 
to the dignity of a bound book. The Notes on Vir- 
ginia were written in 1782, after Jefferson's retire- 



122 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ment from the governorship, in answer to a series 
of questions addressed to him by the secretary of 
the French Legation at Philadelphia, the Marquis 
de Barbe-Marbois. They contain a complete de- 
scription of the State of Virginia, its natural history, 
products, climate, population, laws, education, re- 
ligion, manners, manufactures and commerce, pub- 
lic revenues and expenses, history, memorials, and 
state papers. There is much in the work that is 
antiquated and irrelevant now, of course. Many 
of the speculations on ethnology and natural history 
have been corrected by modern science. But in 
spite of this the volume is a most valuable contri- 
bution to our social and economic history, and a 
fascinating picture of the life of the great State of 
Virginia at the end of the colonial period. 

Finding that he could have his Notes printed in 
France at about one-fourth the cost of publication 
in Virginia, Jefferson had two hundred copies struck 
off in Paris for distribution among his friends in 
America and learned men in Europe. The work 
was soon translated into French and won for its 
author a reputation in the world of letters. A little 
later his statute for religious liberty was passed 
through the legislature of Virginia. It was trans- 
lated and circulated in Europe, where it made a 
great and immediate impression. Jefferson wrote 
to his fellow reviser, Wythe, August 13, 1786: "Our 
act for freedom of religion is extremely applauded. 



THE MISSION TO FRANCE 123 

The ambassadors and ministers of the several na- 
tions at this court have asked of me copies of it to 
send to their sovereigns, and it is inserted at full 
length in several books now in the press; among 
others in the new Encyclo-pazdia" Jefferson was 
invited by De Meusnier, the editor of the part of 
the Encyclopedie Methodique which dealt with politi- 
cal economy and diplomacy, to answer many queries 
about the political and economic history of our 
country, and he revised the whole article, "United 
States," written for the same work. When the ex- 
citing political events of the convocation of the 
notables, the quarrel of the Court with the Parle- 
ment, the agitation over the new taxes and loans, 
the fall of Lomenie de Brienne, and the summons 
of the States General followed in rapid succession 
(1787-9), Jefferson was recognized by the liberal 
statesmen as a valued adviser. 

From the space which the narration of the events 
leading up to the French Revolution occupies in 
both his Memoir and his correspondence, we may 
judge how prominent a place they held in his mind; 
and from the justice and insight with which he de- 
scribes these great events, with which he was so 
intimately associated, we can only regret that we 
do not have a complete and elaborate history of the 
outbreak of the French Revolution from his pen. 
The delicate responsibility of his position as accred- 
ited minister of a friendly nation to the Court of 



124 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Louis XVI prevented his taking that public part 
in the conduct of the Revolution which the liberal 
leaders would gladly have assigned to him, and to 
which some of them actually invited him. But in 
his private correspondence and intercourse he mani- 
fested the liveliest interest in their cause. He was 
just setting out on a journey to the south of France 
when the notables met in February, 1787. He 
wrote Lafayette: "I wish you success in your meet- 
ing. I should form better hopes of it if it were 
divided into two houses instead of seven. 1 Keeping 
the good model of your neighboring country [Eng- 
land] before your eyes, you may get on step by step 
towards a good constitution." And to the Countess 
of Tesse, a few days later, he wrote: "I would have 
the deputies by all means so conduct themselves as 
to have him [King Louis] repeat the calls of the 
Assembly. . . . They would thus put themselves 
in the track of the best guide they could follow 
[Parliament]. . . . Should they attempt more than 
the established habits of the people are ripe for, 
they may lose all and retard indefinitely the ulti- 
mate object of their own aim." 

When the States General were called eighteen 
months later Jefferson continued his moderating ad- 
vice. "If the Etats-Generaux do not aim at too 



1 The notables were divided into seven bureaus with a prince of 
the blood at the head of each. It took a vote of four bureaus to 
pass any measure. 



THE MISSION TO FRANCE 125 

much," he wrote Madison in November, 1788, "they 
may begin a good constitution. There are three 
articles which they may obtain: 1, their own meet- 
ing periodically; 2, the exclusive right of taxation; 
3, the right of registering laws and proposing amend- 
ments to them, as exercised now by the Parlement. 
... If they push at much more, all may fail." 
Jefferson frequently attended the sessions of the 
National Assembly at Versailles and followed the 
debates with sedulous attention. When the quarrel 
between the privileged orders and the third estate 
threatened to wreck the work of the Revolution at 
its inception, he prepared a plan of compromise 
which he sent to Lafayette and Rabaut St. Etienne. 
The plan was for the King to come forward in a 
royal session with a charter of rights in his hand, 
which every member of the Assembly should sign. 
The charter was to contain five important conces- 
sions which the Court was willing to make in return 
for the support of the nation, namely: (1) Free 
annual assemblies of the delegates of the people, (2) 
who should have the sole right of originating the 
laws, and (3) of laying and appropriating the taxes; 
(4) abolition of all pecuniary privileges and exemp- 
tions; and (5) a "bill of rights" guaranteeing lib- 
erty of conscience and the press, habeas corpus, and 
trial by jury. The leading "patriots" (Barnave, 
Lameth, Dupont, Mounier), invited by Lafayette, 
gathered around Jefferson's dinner-table to discuss 



126 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

plans of reconciliation between the factions. The 
Archbishop of Bordeaux, chairman of the Committee 
on the Constitution, formally invited Jefferson, by a 
letter of July 20, 1789, "to attend and assist" at 
the committee meetings, an invitation which Jeffer- 
son very properly declined on the "obvious consid- 
eration " that his mission to King Louis XVFs Court 
forbade him "to intermeddle with the internal trans- 
actions " of France. In all the delicate matter of 
his official neutrality Jefferson conducted himself so 
correctly as to receive the unqualified commenda- 
tion of the King's foreign minister Montmorin. 

While the Revolution was coming to a head in 
France an event of prime importance was taking 
place at home. Eleven weeks after the notables 
met at Versailles, an illustrious group of American 
statesmen met in the convention of Philadelphia to 
frame a new Constitution for the United States. 
"An assembly of demigods," Jefferson called them. 
He followed their work with intense interest, writing 
home long letters to Washington, Madison, Monroe, 
Jay, and other influential friends during the period 
of deliberation and ratification. Because Jefferson 
became a bitter opponent of the Federalist leaders 
who interpreted and administered the Constitution 
during Washington's and Adams's terms of office, 
he has often been represented as an opponent of 
our federal form of government. It has even been 
asserted that he was sent out of the country on the 



THE MISSION TO FRANCE 127 

French mission in order that his democratic and 
decentralizing theories might not interfere to thwart 
the drafting of a "strong" Constitution. Jefferson's 
correspondence, however, furnishes no support for 
such a view. He realized the necessity for a cen- 
tral control over our commerce and our foreign rela- 
tions. On the very eve of his departure for France 
he wrote from Boston to James Madison: "I find 
the conviction growing strongly that nothing can 
preserve our confederacy unless the bonds of union 
be strengthened/' This was after a visit to the 
principal towns of the New England States to study 
their commerce. 

Jefferson also found himself is substantial agree- 
ment with the new Constitution when it reached 
him in Paris in finished form. In a long letter to 
Madison, written December 20, 1787, he commended 
the security of the Federal Government from inter- 
ference by the State Legislatures, the grant of the 
taxing power to Congress, the division of the Na- 
tional Government into its three great departments, 
the election of the House of Representatives by 
popular vote, the equal representation of the States 
in the Senate, the voting in both Houses by indi- 
viduals and not by States, the veto power of the 
President (though he would like to have seen it 
exercised in conjunction with the judiciary), and 
"many other good things of far less moment." He 
repeated his assertion in a letter to Francis Hopkin- 



128 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

son, March 13, 1789: "I approved from the first 
moment the great mass of what is in the new Con- 
stitution." 

What Jefferson found amiss in the Constitution 
was, first of all, that it did not contain a Bill of 
Rights guaranteeing to every citizen such funda- 
mental liberties as freedom of speech and religion, 
habeas corpus, trial by jury, the right of petition, and 
the like. Even in a democratic government, con- 
ducted wholly by the people's representatives, Jef- 
ferson still thought these rights should be explicitly 
safeguarded and not merely left to be inferred. The 
second point that Jefferson objected to was the re- 
eligibility of officers, especially the President, "who 
might be transformed by successive reflections, 
which he would be tempted to secure by foul means, 
if fair means failed, into a virtual dictator." In a 
postscript Jefferson thought it might be well, in 
view of "the instability of our laws," if the Con- 
stitution provided that a year must expire between 
the engrossing of a bill and its passage, or in case of 
"urgency" that a tftvo-thirds vote instead of a bare 
majority should be necessary. 

Despite these objections to the Constitution 
(which are much less serious than those of Hamil- 
ton, who is reckoned among its "champions") Jef- 
ferson wanted the Constitution to be adopted by 
the necessary nine States "in order to insure what 
was good in it," while the other four States should 



THE MISSION TO FRANCE 129 

hold off until a newly assembled convention added 
the desired amendments. He soon came over to 
the "Massachusetts plan," however, of ratification 
with the recommendation to Congress of further 
amendment. " I learn with great pleasure the prog- 
ress of the new Constitution," he wrote to Colonel 
Carrington in May, 1788; "the general adoption 
is to be prayed for, and I wait with great anxiety 
the news from Maryland and South Carolina, which 
have decided [on ratification] before this; and with 
[anxiety] that Virginia, now in session, may give 
the ninth vote of approbation. There could then 
be no doubt of North Carolina, New York, and 
New Hampshire. . . . We should give Rhode 
Island time. I cannot conceive but that she will 
come to rights in the long run. Force in whatever 
form would be a dangerous precedent." The "gen- 
eral adoption" was secured, Rhode Island finally 
came in, and the bill of rights was added in the 
first ten amendments, passed in the first session of 
Congress and ratified by the States. The indefinite 
reeligibility of the President was not forbidden by 
law, but Washington and Jefferson set the exam- 
ple of retirement from the office after the second 
term, which has been followed to this day. 

The radicalism of Jefferson's democracy comes 
out more strongly in the correspondence of his 
Paris days than at any other time of his life. His 
contact with the courts of Europe only confirmed 



130 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

in him the opinion of the happiness of the American 
republic. "My God!" he wrote to Monroe in the 
summer of 1788, "how little do my countrymen 
know what precious blessings they are in possession 
of, and which no other people on earth enjoy." 
He found the French people "ground to powder by 
the vices of their form of government." "Of 
20,000,000 people supposed to be in France," he 
writes to a friend in Philadelphia, "I am of opinion 
there are 19,000,000 more wretched, more accursed 
in every circumstance of human existence than the 
most conspicuously wretched individual in the 
whole United States." Kings he thought the bane 
of their people. There was not a crowned head in 
Europe, he wrote to Washington, "whose talents or 
merits would entitle him to be elected a vestryman 
in any parish in America." There was scarcely 
an evil in Europe, he said, which might not be traced 
to their kin as its source, nor a good which was not 
derived from the "small fibres of republicanism ex- 
isting among them." If all the evils that could 
arise under a republican form of government from 
now till the day of judgment could be weighed 
against the evils which France suffered in a week 
or England in a month from its monarchical gov- 
ernment, the scales would incline in favor of the 
former. No race of kings had ever produced more 
than one man of common sense in twenty genera- 
tions. The best behavior of kings was to leave 



THE MISSION TO FRANCE 131 

things alone: wherever they meddled it was to do 
harm. Of course, many of these sentiments are 
ridiculous exaggerations. When Jefferson wrote 
them Frederick the Great had been dead less than 
two years ! 

The same suspicion of anything approaching arbi- 
trary power or despotic government led Jefferson to 
condone revolution in words which have often been 
quoted to prove that he was little better than an 
anarchist. Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts in 
1786-7 did not seem to him ominous. It was only 
a proof that the people had "liberty enough/ ' and 
he would not have had them have less. "If the 
happiness of the mass of the people can be secured 
at the expense of a little tempest now and then, or 
even of a little blood," he wrote Doctor Stiles, the 
president of Yale College, in acknowledging an 
honorary degree, "it will be a precious purchase. 
Malo libertatem periculosam quam quietam servitu- 
tem!" To others also he "talked some very bad 
nonsense" about seditious uprisings, declaring that 
no country should be too long without a revolution; 
that no country could be safe unless its rulers were 
warned from time to time that the people possessed 
the power and spirit of resistance; that between 
a government without newspapers or newspapers 
without a government he would not hesitate a 
moment to prefer the latter; that the lives lost in a 
century or two in such a good cause as rebellions 



132 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

to tyranny mattered little. "God forbid that we 
should ever be twenty years without such a rebel- 
lion!" he cried. "The tree of liberty must be re- 
freshed from time to time with the blood of patriots 
and tyrants. It is its natural manure." We should 
not take these "wild and whirling words" more seri- 
ously perhaps than Jefferson himself took Shays's 
Rebellion. They were rather a philosophical dogma 
with him (after the manner of the political theorists 
of the eighteenth century) than a sober plan of 
public conduct. At any rate, in his long life of 
service to his State and nation, which covered not 
one but three spans of "twenty years," Jefferson 
never planned or sustained any "rebellion" except 
the great revolution which accomplished the inevita- 
able political severance with Great Britain. 

Neither did Jefferson learn his radicalism in 
France. To represent him, as William E. Curtis 
does, for example, as returning from Paris infected 
by the "frenzy of Jacobinism," is a grotesque per- 
version of the truth. There were no "Jacobins" in 
evidence in France when Jefferson was there. The 
Reign of Terror was as undreamed of in 1789 as 
the despotism of Napoleon. Jefferson's associations 
were all with the moderate liberals whom the Jaco- 
bins later sent to the guillotine when they could 
catch them. Camille Desmoulins, who let loose the 
fury of the people of Paris on the Bastile, declared 
in 1789 that there were not ten republicans in 



THE MISSION TO FRANCE 133 

France besides himself. Jefferson's radicalism was 
far more advanced than that of his Parisian friends, 
and if there was any "infection" it was rather they 
who got it from him. We cannot imagine Mounier 
or Lafayette talking of kings the way Jefferson did. 
If he had learned such language from anybody it 
was from Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine, and 
perhaps those hardy Puritan adversaries of the 
Stuart "man of blood" a hundred years before. 
Jefferson's "democracy" was based less on the 
reading of Rousseau than on the behavior of 
George III. 

In the summer of 1789, while Mirabeau was la- 
boring with voice and pen to guide the titanic forces 
of the French Revolution into the channels of broad 
national reform, Jefferson asked for leave of absence 
to return to America for private and domestic rea- 
sons. He had left Monticello intending to be ab- 
sent for two years, and had been away five. His 
affairs needed his personal attention, and he wanted 
to have his daughters back among American com- 
panions — especially as the elder, Martha, had ex- 
pressed the desire to take the veil and spend her 
life in a French convent. Jefferson's request was 
granted, and he left Havre on October 8, 1789, send- 
ing back to Necker from the deck of his ship, like a 
Parthian shot, his last plea for the admission of 
American salted meats into the French kingdom. 
He landed at Norfolk on November 23, after the 



134 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

exciting dangers of storm, collision, and fire within 
the capes of Chesapeake Bay. After a short visit 
with his brother-in-law, Mr. Eppes, at his country- 
seat in Chesterfield, Jefferson was back at Monti- 
cello, amid jubilant demonstrations of welcome 
from his slaves and household, to celebrate the fes- 
tivities of the Christmas season. 



CHAPTER VI 
IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 

Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single gov- 
ernment. . . . And I do verily believe that if the principle were to 
prevail of a common law being in force in the U. S. . . . it would be- 
come the most corrupt government on the earth. (Jefferson to Gideon 
Granger, August 13, 1800.) 

During the early summer days of 1789, while Jef- 
ferson was intently following the debates of the 
National Assembly of France from the galleries of 
the hall at Versailles, George Washington and the 
first Congress of the United States under the new 
Constitution were setting in motion the wheels of 
government of the American Republic. 

For the important post of secretary of state 
Washington's choice fell on Jefferson. "When I 
arrived in Norfolk," writes the latter to the charge 
d'affaires left behind at Paris, "I saw myself in the 
newspapers nominated to that office. " The personal 
letter of the President reached him at Eppington, 
on his way to Monticello, in December. " I received 
it with real regret," says Jefferson in his Memoir; 
"my wish was to return to Paris when I had left my 
household establishment as if there myself, and to 
see the end of the Revolution, which I then thought 

135 



136 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

would be certainly and happily closed within less 

than a year. ... In my answer of December 

15, I expressed these dispositions candidly to the 

President . . . but assured him that if it was 

believed I could be more useful in the administra- 

ation of the government, I would sacrifice my own 

inclination without hesitation." A second letter 

from Washington, strongly urging the acceptance 

of the nomination, overcame Jefferson's reluctance. 

He only asked to be allowed to remain at Mon- 

ticello long enough to attend to the affairs which 

had brought him over from Paris. On March 

1, 1790, he left Monticello, and, after pausing in 

Philadelphia to visit the venerable Franklin, who 

was then on his death-bed, he reached the seat of 

government in New York on the 21st of March. 

The second session of Congress was already over 

two months old. John Jay, the foreign secretary 

of the old Congress of the Confederation, who had 

agreed to hold over until Jefferson's arrival, had a 

large mass of accumulated business waiting for him. 

The State Department was not then the highly 

organized and complex institution that it is to-day, 

with its four assistant secretaries, its thousands of 

clerks, its law counsellor, its diplomatic and consular 

bureaus, its divisions of citizenship, appointments, 

trade relations, archives, rolls, and library. One 

assistant and one translator were all the secretary's 

staff in Jefferson's day. There was considerable 



IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 137 

uncertainty, too, as to just what matters came under 
the department's authority, but it was the general 
impression that, in addition to foreign affairs, it 
should have charge of whatever domestic business 
did not fall distinctly under the heads of war and 
finance. Washington assured Jefferson, who was 
rather alarmed at the prospective demands of the 
office, that the duties would probably not be so 
arduous and multifarious as he imagined; and that 
if the domestic business should prove burdensome, 
"a further arrangement or division of the office 
could be made." An examination of the rather 
uninteresting list of "domestic" subjects on which 
Jefferson gave the President his written opinion as 
secretary of state shows how wide the range of his 
activities was, and how imperfect was the delimita- 
tion of the duties of the members of the cabinet. 
To-day a secretary of state does not publish his 
opinions on finance, nor a secretary of the navy 
advise on the management of the post-office, but 
Jefferson reported, among other matters, on the 
validity of Indian land grants made by the State of 
Georgia, on the payment of soldiers' accounts, on 
the right of the President to veto a bill fixing the 
residence of Congress, on Indian trade, on the for- 
eign debt, on the establishment of a bank of the 
United States, on the disposition of western lands, 
and on the encouragement of the useful arts. Under 
the Confederation there had been a secretary of 



138 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

foreign affairs, but the new Congress judged — by a 
pardonable inference from the negligibility of our 
country in the European councils since the peace — 
that our foreign diplomacy could be taken care of 
without much additional burden by the secretary 
who managed a large number of home affairs. The 
work that was then thought to be incidental came 
soon to be absorbing and all-important, for the 
very slight and occasional contact between our 
national and our State governments has made a 
secretary of state for home affairs (after the English 
model) almost a superfluity, while our foreign rela- 
tions have grown in delicacy and complexity until 
the secretary of state has become the most impor- 
tant member of the President's cabinet. 

Of all our diplomatists, after the peerless Frank- 
lin, Jefferson was the best fitted for this post. He 
was more supple than Jay, more tactful than Adams, 
more resourceful than Pinckney, more constructive 
than Morris. His five years residence in Paris, the 
centre of European diplomacy, had furnished his 
receptive mind with a full knowledge of the currents 
of political thought and commercial ambitions in 
the Old World. His preference for France was ac- 
knowledged, and it arose from a variety of causes. 
First of all, gratitude. He could see no justice, as 
he wrote Madison in 1789, in viewing two nations 
with identical feelings when one had spent her blood 
and money to save us, while the other had "moved 



IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 139 

heaven and earth and hell to exterminate us in war, 
insulted us in all her councils in peace, shut her 
doors to us in every port where her interests would 
admit it, and libelled us among foreign nations/ ' 
The memory of the "ungracious notice," which 
George III and his Queen had given him on the oc- 
casion of his visit to London in 1786 to confer with 
John Adams, threw into bright relief the courtesy 
and amiability of the French Court and ministers. 
He was convinced, too, that the cultivation of closer 
commercial relations with France would not only 
open wide markets for our products among her 
25,000,000 inhabitants, but would also force Great 
Britain to modify her harsh navigation acts against 
us if she wished to keep her just share of our trade. 
In the French restrictions on our commerce Jefferson 
saw only a mistaken economic policy, but in the 
British navigation acts he saw a deliberate purpose 
to monopolize and control our commerce. 

Then, again, Jefferson's genuine passion for 
democracy made him hail the French Revolution as 
the dawn of a new era in Europe. He hated kings 
and aristocracies. "I continue eternally attached 
to the principles of your Revolution," he wrote to 
Brissot de Warville in May, 1793, even after the 
news of the king's execution and the declaration of 
war against England had reached America. And to 
Pendleton he wrote: "The success of the French 
Revolution will ensure the progress of liberty in 



140 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Europe and its preservation here." He was looking 
with great anxiety, during his whole term of office 
as secretary of state, for the establishment of the 
new government in France, convinced that it would 
be the purveyor of liberty to all the nations of the 
Old World. Finally, to these reasons of public con- 
sideration must be added Jefferson's personal "com- 
patibility of temper" with things French. He liked 
their art and music, their wit and grace, their clarity 
of thought and courtesy of speech, their cheerful- 
ness, their language, their books, their dress, and 
their wines. 

For all this, it is most unjust to say, as McMaster 
does, that " Jefferson was at all times more French 
than American." His preference for France was 
rather in comparison with England than with his 
native land. No one can read the hundreds of let- 
ters which Jefferson wrote from Paris to his friends 
in America and be left with any doubt where his 
affections were. "I sincerely wish you may find it 
convenient to come here," he wrote to Monroe in 
June, 1785. ... "It will make you adore your 
own country, its soil, its climate, its equality, lib- 
erty, laws, people, and manners." He is never 
tired of contrasting the free opportunities of the 
new American Republic with the caste and privilege 
in European society. And if he hails the France 
of 1789 with enthusiasm it is first of all because he 
sees promise that she may become free like us. 



IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 141 

"The French nation," he writes to Washington in 
December, 1788, "has been awakened by our Revo- 
lution. They feel their strength, they are enlight- 
ened, their lights are spreading, and they will not 
retrograde." Jefferson has been represented by 
many historians and biographers, from John Mar- 
shall down, as applying the touchstone of French 
(and even "Jacobinical") principles as the test of 
true Americanism. The exact opposite is the truth. 
He tested the French Revolution by the principles 
of the American Declaration of Independence, and 
felt, as he wrote Edward Rutledge, in 1791, that the 
success or failure of those principles in France 
meant their confirmation or their weakening in 
America. 

The foreign questions with which Jefferson had 
to deal as secretary of state were bequeathed to 
him from the days of the Confederation. They 
arose almost entirely out of the diplomacy of the 
American Revolution and the peace negotiations of 
1783, and were referable to three main categories: 
the attainment of a suitable commercial status with 
the nations of Europe, the adjustment of our rela- 
tions with neighboring possessions of European 
countries on this continent, and the expediency of 
our participation or even our partisanship in the 
great cycle of European wars precipitated by the 
French Revolution. Not one of these three ques- 
tions was settled during Jefferson's occupancy of the 



142 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

secretaryship of state. Not even one of the treaties 
marking the first steps in their eventual settle- 
ment was signed. But, nevertheless, Jefferson made 
valuable contributions in his state papers to the 
solution of them all. 1 

With France our relations were naturally friendly 
when the new government was inaugurated at New 
York. We had been her ally for more than ten 
years. Her aid to us in our Revolution, from what- 
ever motive rendered, had been the indispensable 
condition of the attainment of our independence. 
Moreover, France had no possessions on the main- 
land of North America, and no desire for any. She 
had already made some concessions to our com- 
merce. What further demands we wished to make 
upon her ministers we readily postponed in 1789, to 
watch with genuine sympathy the progress of her 
great Revolution. Serious trouble between America 
and France began only in the second administration 
of Washington, with the kindling of a general Euro- 
pean war. 

It was not thus, however, in our relations with 
England and Spain. They were both our neighbors 
on the American mainland and both unfriendly to 

1 Jefferson resigned the secretaryship at the close of 1793. The 
Jay Treaty with England was concluded in 1794-5, the Pinckney 
Treaty with Spain in 1795, and the convention with Napoleon in 
1800. These treaties were the preliminary and partial adjustment 
of questions that were not finally settled until the close of the war 
between England and Napoleon (1815) and the elimination of Spain 
from the Floridas (1819). 



IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 143 

the new republic. The British refused to evacuate 
rich fur-posts on the Great Lakes, which lay within 
the territory they had abandoned to the United 
States in the treaty of peace. They carried off 
negroes, mostly from Virginia, in violation of the 
treaty stipulations. They refused to open their 
West Indian ports to our trade, and would not even 
recognize the new nation by sending us a minister. 
Washington instructed Gouverneur Morris, our 
agent in London, to seek satisfaction on these 
points, but Pitt was obdurate. When at last the 
British Government condescended to send Mr. 
Hammond to the United States as minister in 1791, 
Jefferson took up the negotiations with him over 
the fur-posts, the negroes, commerce, and the debts 
due English merchants. In a long note to Ham- 
mond, dated May 29, 1792, Jefferson reviewed the 
whole course of the dispute between Great Britain 
and the United States since the peace with modera- 
tion and "sweet reasonableness/' showing by an 
array of legal and historical proof that Congress had 
scrupulously fulfilled its treaty obligations in recom- 
mending the States to place no impediments in the 
way of the collection of the British debts, whereas 
the British, after having agreed by the same treaty 
to withdraw their garrisons from all the posts in the 
United States "with all convenient speed," had 
shown and still showed, after nine years, not the 
least sign of complying. If laws had been passed 



144 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

by certain States to relieve debtors by extending 
the time of payment or issuing paper currency, they 
were not dictated by any hostility to England, but 
by the necessity of preserving the business and prop- 
erty of the States from utter bankruptcy and con- 
fiscation. The precious metals had been drained 
out of the country in payment of arms, munitions, 
and other necessaries from Europe, so that the huge 
debt could not be paid in coin. "Even if the whole 
soil of the United States had been offered for sale 
for ready coin/' said Jefferson, "it would not have 
raised as much as would have satisfied this stipu- 
lation/ ' Furthermore, the British, by their illegal 
retention of the rich fur-posts, were helping to de- 
prive the States of the very money which might 
enable them to pay the debts. Not arbitrary re- 
prisals, but orderly prosecution through the courts, 
was the proper way of obtaining redress if there was 
any unlawful obstruction of justice toward British 
creditors. The note had no immediate effect on 
England's behavior, but it remains one of the 
ablest diplomatic documents in our archives. It set 
a standard for fairness of spirit, thoroughness of in- 
formation, and cogency of reasoning that subsequent 
secretaries of state have felt it an honorable task 
to emulate. 

Jefferson's unbounded confidence in the destiny 
of the American people to expand and fill the conti- 
nent made him the most ardent champion in the 



IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 145 

cabinet of our rights and interests in the West — a 
more ardent champion, even, than President Wash- 
ington himself. He looked with alarm on any 
movement from within or without the republic that 
threatened or thwarted this expansion. "I fear 
from an expression in your letter," he wrote to 
Archibald Stuart from Paris in January, 1786, "that 
the people of Kentucke think of separating not only 
from Virginia (in which they are right), but also 
from the confederacy. I own I should think that 
a most calametous event, and such a one as every 
good citizin on both sides should set himself against. 
Our present federal limits are not too large for good 
government, nor will the increase of votes in Con- 
gress produce any ill effect. On the contrary, it will 
drown the little divisions at present existing there. 
Our confederacy must be viewed as the nest from 
which all America, North and South, is to be peo- 
pled. . . . The navigation of the Mississippi we 
must have." 

No one in America, now that Franklin was dead, 
appreciated so fully as Jefferson both how necessary 
the free navigation of the Mississippi was to the 
security of the new union, and how difficult it would 
be to gain the acknowledgment of our right to the 
free navigation of the river from Spain. It was by 
far the most important diplomatic problem of Wash- 
ington's administration, and Jefferson was the only 
man in the cabinet to fully realize its importance. 



146 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

He had had ample chance to study the disposition 
of Spain in his five years' residence at the Court of 
France. He knew how Spain had entered the 
Revolutionary War in 1779 in order to recover her 
lost province of Florida and her lost fortress of 
Gibraltar from Great Britain; how she had resisted 
Vergennes's appeals to join in the fight against 
England until he threatened to dissolve the " Fam- 
ily Compact" of the Bourbon Kings concluded in 
1761; how she had hated to give even indirect aid 
to colonies revolting against their absent monarch, 
when the southern hemisphere of America was 
filled with her own distant and ill-governed depen- 
dencies; how jealous she was lest a strong nation 
should grow up on the eastern bank of the Missis- 
sippi to confront her dominion on the western bank 
and to dispute the commerce of the great highway 
and the possession of New Orleans. Spain had 
made no alliance with us, as France had, on entering 
the war, nor had she been a party to our treaty of 
peace with England. Her minister, Florida Blanca, 
had declared that there was "a sort of equality of 
enmity" in the relations of England and America 
to Spain, which made it " difficult to desire that 
either side should win." When, therefore, the 
American commissioners at Paris, departing from 
the letter of their instructions, concluded peace with 
Great Britain alone, and France after some righteous 
protest acquiesced in the general pacification, Spain 



IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 147 

had to be content with the recovery of Florida, 
leaving her great Mediterranean fortress in the 
hands of England. Partly to take revenge on the 
United States for precipitating the peace, partly 
to build up a powerful and exclusive empire on the 
Gulf of Mexico, Spain promptly closed the Missis- 
sippi to our western settlers and even arrested our 
traders on the eastern bank of the river above the 
Florida boundary. 

Jefferson, as an expansionist, a patriot, and a 
Virginia "frontiersman/' was opposed to yielding 
our rights on the Mississippi. He agreed with his 
predecessor at Paris, Benjamin Franklin, who said 
that a neighbor might as well ask him to sell his 
street door as to part with a drop of the waters of 
the Mississippi. "The disposition of Congress to 
shut up the Mississippi," wrote Jefferson to Madi- 
son from Paris, "gives me serious apprehension of the 
severance of the eastern and western parts of our 
confederacy." When he became secretary of state in 
1790 he pressed the matter with vigor. On August 
22 he sent to Carmichael, our minister at Madrid, 
certain "heads of considerations on the navigation 
of the Mississippi." It was our right, he claimed, 
and not a favor from Spain. "More than half the 
territory of the United States," he wrote, "is on the 
waters of that River. Two hundred thousand of 
our citizens are settled on them. . . . These have 
no other outlet for their tobacco, rice, corn, hemp, 



148 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

lumber, house timber, ship timber. We have hith- 
erto respected the indecision of Spain, because we 
wish peace and because our western citizens have 
had a vent at home for their productions. A sur- 
plus of products begins now to demand foreign 
markets. " 

Jefferson then considered the actual situation 
which the United States faced of either having to 
coerce the western settlements to accept their own 
economic ruin or to abandon them to Spain (to 
which they were "not disposed"); or to join them 
in a war against Spain to secure their economic 
freedom. He had no doubt that the United States 
would choose the last course. And he begged 
Spain to make the wise choice now of a permanently 
friendly neighbor 1 and the guarantee of the peaceful 
possession of all the territory west of the Mississippi, 
by voluntarily ceding to the United States the ter- 
ritories to the east of the river [New Orleans and 
the Floridas]. Needless to say, the Spanish Govern- 
ment did not adopt this amicable proposition of 
Jefferson's. Negotiations dragged on until he was 
out of office. It was not until 1795 that the treaty 
concluded by Thomas Pinckney secured us even a 

x The passage in Jefferson's original draft is interesting: "Safer 
for Spain that we should be her neighbor than England. Conquest 
not in our principles. Inconsistent with our government. Not our 
interest to cross the Miss, for ages. And will never be our interest 
to remain with those who do." We bought the western basin of the 
Mississippi only thirteen years after this was written — and Thomas 
Jefferson was the purchaser ! 



IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 149 

temporary right of deposit and reshipment at New 
Orleans. For a full score of years from the peace 
treaty of 1783 to the purchase of Louisiana and the 
Island of New Orleans by President Jefferson in 
1803 we were kept on the verge of a war with Spain 
over the navigation of the Mississippi. 

Valuable as Jefferson's services were in his nego- 
tiations with foreign countries, and important as 
were the precedents which he established as our 
first secretary of state, it is for other activities and 
interests that he is chiefly remembered as a mem- 
ber of Washington's cabinet — just as during his 
years in France his official business was overshad- 
owed by the issues of the approaching Revolution. 
The new Constitution of the United States abolished 
the clumsy and inefficient political machinery of 
the Confederation altogether. Federal government 
was built up de novo. Organization, which is the 
prior condition to administration, brought with it 
a multitude of questions bearing on the relations of 
the different departments of government to each 
other, the limits of executive and legislative powers, 
the interpretation of the mandates and prohibitions 
of the Constitution, and the reconciliation of pro- 
jected legislation with its letter and spirit. It was 
not to be expected that a man of Thomas Jefferson's 
philosophical curiosity and practical experience in 
politics should renounce an active part in these 
questions in order to devote himself to the technical 



150 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

duties of his department. Furthermore, the mem- 
bers of the cabinet were expected and invited by the 
President to furnish him advice on all important 
measures and policies. Washington was eminently 
cautious and deliberate. Though he did not shun 
responsibility or darken counsel by indecision, he 
took pains to learn the opinions of his subordinates 
and to defer to them so far as possible. As com- 
mander of the armies of the Revolution he heard 
patiently and weighed carefully the advice given 
in the council of his generals. As President he 
treated his cabinet as a council, supporting the 
opinion which won his consent or casting a deciding 
vote in case of a balance of opinion among the four 
members. 1 

We have seen that Jefferson had some misgivings 
about certain details of the Constitution adopted by 
the fathers at Philadelphia (as what American pa- 
triot did not !) ; but we have also seen that he was a 
sincere believer in the Constitution as a whole, and 
unreservedly commended its chief features, such as 
the division of the government into three great 
branches, the " happy compromise" of interests be- 

1 Some members of the Constitutional Convention wanted the 
President limited by an executive council, but the proposition was 
defeated. Charles Pinckney in his plan of government spoke of the 
heads of departments as forming a "cabinet council," whose advice 
the President should consult. But the Constitution mentions 
neither "cabinet" nor "council." It does not even require the 
President to call the heads of the departments together in cabinet 
meetings. The cabinet was not officially recognized in our system 
until 1907. 



IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 151 

tween the large and the small States, the qualified 
veto power of the executive, the power of taxation. 
"I would wish it not to be altered," he wrote in a 
letter from Paris to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 
1789, "during the life of our great leader, whose 
executive talents are superior to those I believe of 
any man in the world, and who alone by the author- 
ity of his name and the confidence reposed in his 
perfect integrity, is fully qualified to put the new 
government so under way as to secure it against 
the efforts of opposition." 

Although Jefferson recognized the necessity for a 
Constitution and accepted the one framed, he was 
nevertheless solicitous that the federal power cre- 
ated by it should keep strictly within the letter of 
the law. He saw in the institutions of township, 
county, and State, in close touch with the people, 
the best guarantees of democracy. The New Eng- 
land town meeting he thought the most perfect form 
of government in America. He was jealous lest 
local liberties be encroached on by the Federal Gov- 
ernment, and so be developed insidiously the cen- 
tralization and paternalism which he considered the 
curse of the European monarchies. This solicitude, 
which was shared in a lesser degree by his kinsman 
and colleague in the cabinet, Attorney-General 
Edmund Randolph, was in sharp contrast with the 
bold, aggressive policy of the secretary of the trea- 
sury, Alexander Hamilton, who advocated the en- 



152 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

largement and consolidation of the central power. 
Secretary of War Knox followed Hamilton almost 
slavishly. And Washington, while prizing Jeffer- 
son's advice highly, and attempting to hold the 
balance justly between the two " factions" of his 
cabinet, inclined more and more to the views of 
Hamilton. This condemned Jefferson finally to 
the role of the "leader of the opposition" in the 
cabinet. 

When Jefferson reached New York in March, 
1790, to take his seat at Washington's council 
board, the policy of the administration was well 
under way. Congress was in the midst of its second 
session. A tariff act had been passed to provide a 
national revenue and incidentally to afford protec- 
tive encouragement to American manufacturers. 
The executive departments had been organized. 
The Supreme Court had been constituted, consist- 
ing of a chief justice and five associate justices, with 
seventeen subordinate circuit and district courts in 
the States. And, most significant of all, Alexander 
Hamilton, at the head of the treasury department, 
was fairly launched on the financial programme 
which split cabinet, Congress, and the country into 
the opposing parties of Federalists and Republicans. 

On January 14, 1790, while Jefferson was still 
tarrying at Monticello, Hamilton presented to Con- 
gress his first Report on the Public Credit, a long 
document which Henry Cabot Lodge ranks second 



IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 153 

only in importance to Lincoln's Emancipation Proc- 
lamation in our American state papers, for the far- 
reaching results which it produced. In it Hamilton 
urged not only the payment in full of the face value 
of the foreign and domestic debt of the United 
States contracted in the Revolution and under the 
Confederation, but even the assumption of the 
State debts by the central government — thus creat- 
ing a great national debt of some seventy-five 
million dollars, held by the capitalists of the coun- 
try, and assured to them as a permanent invest- 
ment by the provision that Congress might redeem 
no more than two per cent of the principal annu- 
ally. To Hamilton's opponents this scheme ap- 
peared like simply mortgaging the government of 
the United States to the capitalist class, extracting 
the annual interest of millions of dollars on the 
mortgage from the toil of the farmer, the artisan, 
and the merchant. Hamilton did not deny that his 
chief object was to rally the wealth of the country 
to the support of the government, to preserve the 
credit of the country in the eyes of foreign nations. 
As far back as 1780, when the paper currency of the 
country was almost worthless, he had written, as 
a young man of twenty-three, to the experienced 
financier, Robert Morris: "The only plan that can 
preserve the currency is one which will make it 
the immediate interest of the moneyed men to 
co-operate with the government in its support." 



154 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

From this advocacy of a partnership between capi- 
tal and government Hamilton never departed. 

The contest over the assumption of the State 
debts, the hardest part of the Hamiltonian pro- 
gramme to put through Congress, was at its height 
when Jefferson arrived in New York. In the Anas, 
a kind of scrap-book thrown together nearly thirty 
years later from memoranda of conversations and 
impressions jotted down at the time, Jefferson gives 
a lively description of how he was drawn into the 
controversy. "So high were the feuds excited by 
this subject that . . . business was suspended. 
Congress met and adjourned from day to day with- 
out doing anything, the parties being too much out 
of temper to do business together. The Eastern 
members particularly, who, with Smith from South 
Carolina, were the principal gamblers in these scenes, 
threatened a secession and dissolution. Hamilton 
was in despair. As I was going to the President's 
one day, I met him in the street. He walked me 
backward and forward before the President's door 
for half an hour. He painted pathetically the tem- 
per into which the legislature had been wrought, the 
disgust of those who were called the Creditor states, 
the danger of the secession of their members, and 
the separation of the states. He observed that the 
members of the administration ought to act in con- 
cert, that tho' this question was not of my depart- 
ment, yet a common duty should make it a common 



IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 155 

concern; . . . and that the question having been 
lost by a small majority only, it was possible that 
an appeal from me to the judgment and discretion 
of some of my friends might effect a change in the 
vote, and the machine of government, now sus- 
pended, might be again set into motion. I told him 
I was really a stranger to the whole subject; not 
having yet informed myself of the system of finances 
adopted, I knew not how far this [assumption] was 
a necessary sequence; that undoubtedly, if its rejec- 
tion endangered a dissolution of our union at this 
incipient stage, I should deem that the most unfor- 
tunate of all consequences, to avert which all par- 
tial and temporary evils should be yielded. I pro- 
posed to him, however, to dine with me the next day, 
and I would invite another friend or two, bring 
them into conference together, and I thought it im- 
possible that reasonable men, consulting together 
coolly, could fail, by some mutual sacrifices of 
opinion, to form a compromise which was to save 
the union." The informal diplomats of the dinner- 
table arranged the matter satisfactorily. Hamilton 
got his Southern votes for assumption, and the loca- 
tion of the capital went to the banks of the Potomac. 
Later on, when Jefferson saw the full significance 
of Hamilton's financial programme, and realized to 
his horror that he had been made a party to fixing 
the " octopus' 7 of the money power on the govern- 
ment, he complained bitterly that he had been 



156 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

"duped" by Hamilton and "most ignorantly and 
innocently been made to hold the candle" for his 
nefarious act. At the time the bargain was made, 
however, Jefferson does not seem to have had any 
suspicion of deceitfulness on Hamilton's part or 
impropriety in his own behavior. In his contempo- 
raneous correspondence he speaks of assumption in 
a disinterested fashion as "one of those questions 
which present great inconveniences whichever way 
it is decided"; as a measure "to be yielded to for 
the sake of union and to save us from the greatest 
of all calamities, the total extinction of our credit 
in Europe"; and as "a proposition which could not 
be totally rejected without preventing the funding 
of the public debt altogether, which would be tanta- 
mount to a dissolution of the government." On the 
day before the bill passed he wrote approvingly to 
Francis Eppes, his brother-in-law: "The assumption 
of the state debts will, I believe, be agreed to." 
These quotations make clear that Jefferson, in so 
far as he had given any attention to the question of 
assumption, was not at any serious disagreement 
with Hamilton, and give some color to the charge 
of his hostile biographers that he was inclined to 
read sinister motives into the acts of men from 
whom he had come to differ. Jefferson had no 
cause to complain of the assumption bill. He had 
been in this country ever since the policy was 
broached in Hamilton's first Report. He was an 



IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 157 

astute observer of current opinion and a close stu- 
dent of public affairs. If he was " duped" by Ham- 
ilton in 1790 he had only himself to blame. 

The statement, often repeated, that Washington 
called Jefferson and Hamilton into the cabinet as 
representatives of opposing opinions, so that he 
might hear both sides of every question and himself 
hold the balance between the conflicting opinions, is 
not true to fact. The two men probably knew each 
other only slightly, though both had been occasional 
members of the old Congress of the Confederation. 
They could never have been congenial friends with 
their total disparity in tastes and temper, but there 
is nothing to show that they did not regard each 
other with mutual respect when they first met at 
Washington's cabinet table. Jefferson, at any rate, 
had written from Paris in 1785 to an English friend 
who was thinking of opening a lawsuit for the re- 
covery of confiscated lands in New York, "to apply 
to Colo. Hamilton, who was an aid to Genl Washing- 
ton, and is now very eminent at the bar and much 
to be relied on." Antagonism developed rapidly, 
however, between the two secretaries after their 
first months in the cabinet together, and before a 
year had passed they were sure to be found pitted 
against each other on every measure proposed. 
Hamilton had the advantage of being earlier on the- 
field and getting his measures well started before 
Jefferson appeared. He also enjoyed the friend- 



158 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ship and confidence of Washington to a degree not 
shared by any other man. The establishment of our 
finances on a sound basis being the most important 
task of the new government, Hamilton's office and 
person were brought into a prominence in the new 
government which not even the delicate and com- 
plicated questions of foreign policy could obscure. 
Against these handicaps Jefferson only fought the 
harder for his principles. If his language was some- 
times extreme, if his methods at times verged on 
arbitrariness, if he was too quick to read interested 
motives into his adversary's acts, or if he took 
fright too easily at the spectre of "monarchy," it 
is only fair to remember that he was the " leader of 
the opposition" in the government. 

The Hamiltonian policies of funding the debt of 
the Confederation at par, of assuming the State 
debts, and of erecting a national bank to hold the 
government balances and handle the government 
loans and disbursements, all seemed to Jefferson 
parts of a cleverly laid conspiracy to convert our 
new republic into a virtual monarchy. Hamilton 
was outspoken in his admiration for the English 
model. Once when John Adams remarked in his 
presence that the British Government, if purged of 
its corruptions, would be the most perfect govern- 
ment on earth, Hamilton replied that even with its 
corruptions it was the most perfect government on 
earth — a reply on which Jefferson based his charge 



IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 159 

in the Anas that "Hamilton was not only a mon- 
archist, but for a monarchy based on corruption." 
We had no aristocracy of blood and title, but its 
place could be supplied by an aristocracy of wealth, 
just as effectively in control of the government 
through the monopoly of its funds. 

Moreover, the way by which such control was 
being secured by Hamilton's followers, Jefferson 
contended, was dishonorable if not downright dis- 
honest. Members of Congress and their friends 
among the capitalist class of the Atlantic seaboard, 
knowing of the probable passage of the funding bill 
long before the news reached the "common people" 
and especially the farmers of the interior regions, 
began to buy up the depreciated securities of the 
Confederation (often the only wealth of the retired 
Revolutionary soldier) with great eagerness and at 
a substantial discount. "Couriers and relay horses 
by land," says Jefferson in the Anas, "and swift 
sailing pilot boats by sea, were flying in all direc- 
tions. Active partners and agents were associated 
and employed in every State, town, and country 
neighborhood, and this paper was bought up at 
five shillings and even as low as two shillings in the 
pound, before the holder knew that Congress had 
already provided for its redemption at par. Im- 
mense sums were thus filched from the poor and 
ignorant, and fortunes accumulated by those who 
had themselves been poor enough before. Men thus 



160 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

enriched by the dexterity of a leader would of 
course follow the chief who was leading them to 
fortune, and become the zealous instruments of all 
his enterprises." Jefferson called the fund-holders 
in Congress "a corrupt squadron" marshalled by 
the secretary of the treasury. 

It is unfortunately true that speculation took 
place, and even reached a mania which Hamilton 
himself deplored as much as Jefferson. It is true 
that men gained undeserved fortunes rapidly, and 
that the fund-holders voted solidly for Hamilton's 
measures in Congress. But even Jefferson confessed 
that our credit must be restored. Could it have been 
restored without the funding measures, even though 
they brought speculation in their train ? And grant- 
ing that there was room for an honest difference of 
opinion on the equity of the funding measures, there 
is still no reason for characterizing Hamilton's party 
as " corrupt." The secretary of the treasury acted 
in good faith. There is no evidence at all that he 
gave "tips" to congressmen or capitalists on the 
policy of the department. He believed that the 
debt of the country should be redeemed at par value 
for the sake of the country's credit and common 
honesty. His object was not to rob anybody. He 
did not act precipitately or secretly. The question 
of redemption was already agitated before Hamilton 
made his famous Report of January 14, and had re- 
ceived the approbation of President Washington. 



IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 161 

The price of the certificates of the Confederation 
debt had been rising steadily since the adoption of 
the new Constitution. 

When Washington signed the bill establishing a 
national bank in 1791, and thus put the capstone 
on the Hamiltonian financial structure, Jefferson, 
defeated in Congress and the cabinet, turned else- 
where for allies in his fight to "save the republican 
form of government." He had faith in "the peo- 
ple," the great mass of farmers, artisans, small 
traders, and humble folk, whom Hamilton and his 
followers half feared and half despised as the "mob." 
"Your people, sir," exclaimed Hamilton in a post- 
prandial discussion, bringing his fist down on the 
table, "is a great beast" ! To educate the mass of 
the people, on whom the hope of continued freedom 
must depend, so that they should be increasingly 
capable of supervising and controlling their gov- 
ernors, seemed to Jefferson the sublimest mission of 
the republic. He didn't object to "a little rebellion 
now and then," nay, he even prayed God that we 
should never be twenty years without one, because 
rebellions showed that the people were alert "to 
resist the evils under which, if they remained quiet, 
it meant a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the 
public liberty." He owned that he was "not a 
friend to a very energetic government," which 
tended invariably to oppression. "The people are 
the only censors of their governors," he declared 



162 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

. . . "they may be led astray for a moment, but 
will soon correct themselves." Publicity was the 
only cure for political evils. The basis of our gov- 
ernment being the opinion of the people, its very 
first object should be to keep that right. 

It was in perfect accord, therefore, with Jeffer- 
son's principles to transfer the fight against Hamil- 
ton's financial measures, the " corrupt squadron," 
the "anglomaniacs" and "monocrats," who wished 
to subvert our Constitution, from Congress to the 
country at large, and to educate the people to a 
jealous guardianship of their liberties. A certain 
Philip Freneau, poet and journalist, an ardent Dem- 
ocrat, was recommended to the good offices of Jef- 
ferson by his old college-mate at Princeton, James 
Madison. Jefferson gave Freneau a position as 
translating clerk in the Department of State at the 
magnificent salary of two hundred and fifty dollars 
a year, and encouraged him to set up a newspaper 
in Philadelphia as a makeweight to John Fenno's 
United States Gazette, which under Hamilton's pat- 
ronage was "disseminating the doctrines of mon- 
archy, aristocracy, and the exclusion of the influ- 
ence of the people." Freneau's National Gazette, 
which began to appear weekly in the autumn of 
1791, was the most caustic sheet that ever came 
from the printing-presses of America. In prose and 
verse alike it lashed the "First Lord of the Trea- 
sury" and all his satellites. Even the imperturb- 






IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 163 

able Washington, to whom the editor with diabolical 
politeness mailed three " complimentary " copies of 
every issue, was stung to indignant protest by its 
virulent abuse. He complained to Jefferson, but 
got little comfort. "I took it his intention," says 
Jefferson, "to be that I should interfere in some 
way with Freneau, perhaps withdraw his appoint- 
ment as translating clerk to my office. But I will 
not do it. His paper has saved our Constitution, 
which was galloping fast into monarchy/ 1 

The attacks of Freneau in the Gazette destroyed 
the last semblance of friendship in the relations of 
Hamilton and Jefferson, already strained to the 
breaking-point by contests in the cabinet over every 
detail of the treasury programme, and embittered 
by the high-handed interference of Hamilton with 
the business of the Department of State. The 
secretary of the treasury accused Jefferson of being 
the "patron" of the Gazette, and scored him for vili- 
fying the administration in which he himself held 
so conspicuous a place. Jefferson declined to reply, 
but Freneau made an affidavit to the effect that 
Jefferson had nothing to do with his paper and had 
"never directly or indirectly written, dictated, or 
composed a single fine for it." The unedifying 
wrangle of the two chief officers of the cabinet, 
sometimes coming near to blows across the council 
table, distressed the President. He wrote to them 
both in the summer of 1792, endeavoring to effect a 



164 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

reconciliation, but without success. Both secre- 
taries were devoted to Washington, and would have 
done anything possible to please him; but it was 
impossible for them to agree or even to agree to 
disagree. Each in his reply to Washington threw 
the blame on the other, and both offered to resign. 
But Washington wanted them both in his cabinet, 
and they remained to quarrel for more than a year 
longer. 

During the sultry days of August, 1792, while 
Washington was laboring to restore harmony in his 
cabinet, a Jacobin uprising in Paris drove King 
Louis XVI from the throne which his Capetian an- 
cestors had occupied for eight centuries. On Sep- 
tember 22 a convention of seven hundred and fifty 
delegates of France, assembled at Paris, proclaimed 
the first French Republic. When the news of these 
events reached America in the early winter there was 
great rejoicing. The Society of Tammany illumi- 
nated the windows of its " wig- warn" in New York. 
In Boston a great "civic feast" was held in honor of 
the new republic. The name of Oliver's Dock was 
changed to Liberty Square; an ox was roasted whole 
and distributed to the people with bread and punch; 
the school children were given "civic cakes" stamped 
with "liberty and equality." Men and women wore 
the tricolor cockade and addressed each other as 
"citizen" and "citess" after the manner of the 
Jacobins. Then more news came of a different sort: 



IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 165 

how the convention had divided into the warring 
factions of the Mountain and the Gironde, how they 
had executed their King and declared war against 
Great Britain. 

The effect of these rapid events of the French Rev- 
olution on America was to widen the cleft between 
the two parties, which had already formed on the 
financial issue, and which had already had their first 
trial of strength in the elections of 1792. 1 The Fed- 
eralists, as Hamilton's followers were called, includ- 
ing the great merchants and bankers, the place-men 
and security-holders, the Tories and the majority 
of the clergy, sympathized with England. Over fifty 
per cent of our trade was with British ports and over 
seventy-five per cent of our revenue was derived 
from that trade. Our imports from Great Britain 
and her colonies in 1792 were over fifteen million 
dollars, as against two million dollars from France. 
Large amounts of British capital were invested in 
the shares of our national bank. The farmers, arti- 
sans, and small traders, on the other hand, whose 
interests were wholly domestic and whose desire was 
for economy with low taxes, followed Jefferson as the 
party of the Democratic-Republicans. They sym- 



1 Washington was again the unanimous choice of the electors for 
President, but the choice for the second place was contested with 
party bitterness. John Adams, the administration candidate, re- 
received 77 votes, while his Republican opponent, George Clinton, 
got 50, and Jefferson the 4 votes of Kentucky. A Republican 
majority was elected to Congress. 



166 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

pathized with France, both because she was our ally, 
to whom we owed in large measure our indepen- 
dence, and because she was the enemy of England, 
whose institutions we were now " slavishly copying." 
They saw in the French Declaration of the Rights of 
Man (August, 1789) the reassertion of the princi- 
ples of the Declaration of Independence, to which, 
they said, we were becoming recreant. 

We had made a treaty of alliance — the only one 
in our history — with France in 1778, guaranteeing 
her possessions in the West Indies in case of rupture 
between France and England, and opening the 
ports of the United States to French ships of war 
bringing in enemy prizes. When Edmond Genet, 
emissary from the new French Republic to the 
"sister Republic" of the United States, landed at 
Charleston, South Carolina, in April, 1793, he ex- 
pected to profit by this alliance. He didn't ask us 
to join in the war against Great Britain, because he 
knew that the terms of our treaty would not warrant 
that request, but he did ask certain favors and 
assume certain powers which soon brought him into 
conflict with the authorities at Philadelphia. He 
wanted us to advance interest payments on our 
debt to France which he might expend for military 
supplies in America. He took a British prize 
within the capes of Chesapeake Bay, and proceeded 
to fit out ships in our ports to prey on British com- 
merce. He brought blank commissions to fill out 



IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 167 

with the names of American citizens who should 
raise regiments or naval recruits for the war. 

Washington, with the unanimous consent of his 
cabinet, declared our neutrality toward the Euro- 
pean struggle (April 22, 1793), but Genet's excitable 
temper was only the more aroused. He criticised 
the President and scolded the secretary of state. 
He paid his sarcastic compliments to a " republic " 
that allowed itself to be governed by an "aristo- 
crat." He used the Republican press to make prop- 
aganda for France, indulging in highly colored 
rhetoric on the ingratitude of a land where French 
blood had been poured out like water for the cause 
of freedom. In defiance of the warnings of the 
government, and in violation of his own implicit 
promise to Jefferson, he allowed the converted prize 
the Petite Democrate to sail away from her moorings 
at Philadelphia. 

Jefferson's conduct in these trying circumstances 
is acknowledged even by those historians who are 
quick to condemn his motives to have been most 
correct. It was a great disappointment to him 
that the envoy from the nation which he set next 
to his own in his affections should behave in such a 
way as to merit rebuke and finally dismissal, but he 
did not hesitate on that account to do his duty. 
He delivered a cabinet opinion on May 16, 1793, to 
the effect that we should forbid France to fit out 
privateers in our harbors and apologize to Great 



168 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Britain for the capture of any of her vessels on the 
high seas by such privateers. He warned Genet 
that French vessels illegally equipped and com- 
manded must leave our waters. He quoted Vattel 
and other learned authorities on the laws of nations, 
much to Genet's disgust, who begged that they 
might treat like republicans and not " lower" them- 
selves "to the level of ancient politics by diplomatic 
subtleties." "I do not augur well of the conduct 
of the new French minister/' wrote Jefferson to 
Monroe on June 28, 1793. " I am doing everything 
in my power to moderate the impetuosity of his 
movements and to destroy the dangerous opinions 
which have been excited in him that the people of 
the United States will disavow the acts of their gov- 
ernment, and that he has an appeal from the Execu- 
tive to Congress and from both to the people." 
And a few days later to Madison: "Never in my 
opinion was so calamitous an appointment made as 
that of the present minister of F[rance] here. Hot- 
headed, all imagination, no judgment, passionate, 
disrespectful, and even indecent to the P [resident] 
... he renders my position immensely difficult." 
Finally Genet's recall was demanded, Jefferson 
writing to our minister at Paris, Gouverneur Morris, 
a review of the conduct of the impetuous envoy, and 
declaring that "if our citizens have not already been 
shedding each other's blood, it is not owing to the 
moderation of M. Genet." Jefferson realized, of 



IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 169 

course, that the recall of Genet, while a relief to 
himself, would be in the nature of a triumph for the 
Hamiltonian party, who had warned against the 
danger of showing any sympathy with the French 
democrats; but he was not deterred thereby from 
doing his duty to the President and the laws of the 
country. Professor McMaster's unjust remark that 
Jefferson was "at all times more French than 
American" needs no further refutation than the 
Genet episode. 

Ever since his failure to check the financial cen- 
tralization of the Hamiltonian programme, and his 
consequent alienation from the policy of the admin- 
istration, Jefferson had been anxious to resign from 
the cabinet. He intended fully to retire at the end 
of Washington's first term, and wrote to the Presi- 
dent from Monticello on September 9, 1792, in reply 
to the appeal for reconciliation with Hamilton, that 
he looked "to that period with the longing of a 
wave-worn mariner who has at length the land in 
view." At the President's solicitation, he consented 
to remain, but the vexation of Genet's conduct and 
the encroachment of Hamilton on his department 
by instructing the collectors of customs to be on 
the lookout for French violations of neutrality and 
report them to him in secret made the thought of 
continuing in the cabinet intolerable to him. On 
July 30, 1793, he again wrote Washington, begging 
to be relieved of his office "at the close of the pres- 



170 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ent quarter (September 30)." He alleged his doubt- 
less sincere desire to return to Monticello to repair 
his estate, but political vexations were probably the 
chief reason for his request. When Washington 
called on him in August to persuade him to remain 
until the end of the year, Jefferson declared that he 
was obliged in the present cabinet to move exactly 
in the circles which bore him peculiar hatred: "That 
is to say, the wealthy aristocrats, the merchants 
connected loosely with England, the newly created 
paper fortunes." "Thus surrounded my words are 
caught, multiplied, misconstrued, and even fabri- 
cated and spread abroad to my injury." Jefferson 
stayed to the end of the year, however, and de- 
parted for Monticello with a New Year's letter of 
hearty commendation from the President: "Since it 
has been impossible to persuade you to forego any 
longer the indulgence of your desire for private life, 
the event, however anxious I am to avert it, must 
be submitted to. But I cannot suffer you to leave 
your station without assuring you that the opinion 
which I had formed of your integrity and talents, 
and which dictated your original nomination, has 
been confirmed by the fullest experience; and that 
both have been eminently displayed in the discharge 
of your duty. Let a conviction of my most earnest 
prayers for your happiness accompany you in your 
retirement." So clear had Jefferson been in his 
great office that John Marshall could not withhold 



IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 171 

a word of tempered praise in declaring that "this 
gentleman withdrew from political station at a time 
when he stood particularly high in the esteem of his 
countrymen." 1 

1 William E. Curtis in The True Thomas Jefferson, sl book teem- 
ing with errors, says that Jefferson "used underhand methods and 
was commonly engaged in intrigue not only against his colleagues 
in the cabinet but even against Washington"; that his reply of Sep- 
tember 9, 1792, to Washington's letter was "insulting and inexcusa- 
ble"; but that Washington out of respect for Jefferson's ability and 
patriotism "overlooked the insult and allowed him to remain in the 
cabinet"; that Jefferson promised to resign in January, 1793, but 
when the time came reconsidered and held on to his place, much to 
the President's disappointment; and that, finally, "Jefferson de- 
clined to dismiss Freneau and was himself compelled to resign." 
Every single one of these statements is false. But perhaps nothing 
better could be expected of a book that is vitiated all the way 
through by the hypothesis that Jefferson was a demagogue whose 
"plans of government were acquired from the French revolution- 
ists," who had moved among "the citizen leaders of the Revolution 
and experienced the bloody and furious scenes in France." Mr. 
Curtis makes Jefferson bring home to America the Jacobin fury two 
years before it broke out in France. 



CHAPTER VII 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 

We are sensible of the duty and expediency of submitting our opinions 
to the will of the majority, and can wait with patience until they get 
right if they happen to be at any time wrong. (Jefferson to John 
Breckenridge, January 29, 1800.) 

"The ensuing year will be the longest of my life, and 
the last of such hateful labors/' wrote Jefferson to 
his daughter, Martha Randolph, in March, 1792; 
"the next we will sow our cabbages together." In 
letters written to his friends after his belated return 
to Monticello, he renounces all further interest in 
politics. He is now "settled at home as a farmer," 
his mind "totally absorbed in rural occupations. " 
To John Adams he writes that his only regret is 
that his retirement was "postponed four years too 
long." He replies to a friendly letter from Washing- 
ton with the sentiment: "I cherish tranquillity too 
much to suffer political things to enter my mind at 
all"; and declares to Madison that he has not seen 
or wished to see a Philadelphia paper since he left 
the town. Indeed he doubted if he should "ever 
take another newspaper of any sort" — the man 
who preferred newspapers without a government to 
a government without newspapers! If such senti- 

172 



THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 173 

merits sound hypocritical, especially in view of the 
fact that Jefferson presently entered the political 
race and spent twelve consecutive years in the 
offices of Vice-President and President, we must 
remember that it was the fashion in his day for 
public men to protest in elaborate terms their aver- 
sion to the cares of office, and to think themselves 
in "declining years" when they had reached the 
age of fifty. Jefferson was probably sincere in his 
belief that he had given up active political life for- 
ever for his cabbages at Monticello. But he soon 
began sowing the seeds of a different harvest. 

"It is easier to get into politics than to get out of 
them," remarks the Tory in Lowes Dickinson's 
Modern Symposium. So it proved with Jefferson. 
His retirement from the cabinet left a free field in 
the administration to Hamilton, under whose influ- 
ence Washington became an out-and-out Federalist. 
"I shall not," the President wrote to Pickering in 
September, 1795, "while I have the honor to ad- 
minister the government, bring a man into any office 
whose political tenets are adverse to the measures 
which the general government are pursuing, for 
this, in my opinion, would be a sort of political sui- 
cide." The brief experiment of non-partisan gov- 
ernment was at an end in the United States. But 
Thomas Jefferson was not the man to stand idly by 
and see what he considered the wrong party and 
principles win. He was too much of a politician 



174 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

and too much of a patriot for that. The opponents 
of the administration in Congress and the country 
at large had already come to look on him as their 
leader, and he must not fail them. The Republicans 
of Boston in a caucus wrote him just after his resig- 
nation from the cabinet that "if he would place 
himself at their head, they would choose him at 
the next election.' ' The politics which he banished 
from his earliest letters from Monticello in 1794 
came stealing back, in first a sentence, then a para- 
graph, then a disquisition. He checks himself reso- 
lutely with "but away, politics!" and turns to the 
praise of his clover or the price of his wheat. But 
the old lure is too strong for him. His conversion 
is unconvincing. He reminds one of Saint Jerome, 
turned Christian, trying to scourge the love of Cicero 
out of his mind. 

The leaders of political parties have always been 
inclined to attribute base motives to their oppo- 
nents and high motives to themselves; and the his- 
torians who come after them have too often been 
willing to accept one or the other of the evaluations 
as true according as their own sympathies inclined. 
For the Federalists, Jefferson and his followers were 
the advocates of the irresponsible rule of the mob. 
They were deliberately working to bring the gov- 
ernment into contempt and ruin its credit in the 
eyes of Europe. They opposed its "compulsive 
energy" because they didn't want to pay their 



THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 175 

debts. They "generated mistrust and irritation 
between this country and Great Britain" because 
they were under "the baleful ascendency of French 
influence" and the victims of "a contagion of level- 
ism." They were inoculated with the incendiary, 
anarchistic, atheistic poison of the Jacobins. For 
the Republicans, on the other hand, Hamilton was 
the chief of a "corrupt squadron" in Congress who 
had created a fictitious debt in order to keep the 
common people of the country under a perpetual 
burden of taxation, which would insure their social 
serfdom to "the rich, the well-born, and the able." 
The Federalist system "flowed from principles ad- 
verse to liberty." Its adherents flouted the Con- 
stitution and wished to "administer it into a mon- 
archy." Their contempt for the people proceeded 
from the motives of aristocratic snobbery and eco- 
nomic greed. What each party prized as its princi- 
ples the other denounced as rank prejudices. The 
fiscal system which Hamilton regarded as the 
guaranty of our national honor, was for Jefferson 
"a tissue of machinations against the liberty of the 
country"; while Fisher Ames stigmatized as "revo- 
lutionary Robespierreism " the Republican move- 
ment which Jefferson called "the awakening of the 
spirit of 1776." 

It would be idle to multiply quotations to prove 
the truth or the falsehood of either of these points 
of view. The test of their "truth" is an experimen- 



176 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

tal one. Politics is not a determined science^ but a 
very flexible and pragmatic art. And, doubtless, 
since speculation on the forms and functions of gov- 
ernment began, men have been divided into these 
two fundamental parties — one advocating govern- 
ment/or the people by the strong, the rich, the titled, 
the educated; the other advocating government by 
the people through eliciting the dormant intellect 
and virtue of the whole community by a wide-spread 
system of free education, a close control of public 
officers by the people, and a wide extension of the 
suffrage. As long as men live together in political 
societies there will be those who fear anarchy more 
than tyranny and those who set freedom above 
efficiency. We incline toward the one or the other 
of these opinions according to our nature and 
nurture, and the bias is seldom removed by educa- 
tion or experience. There are "tastes" in pol- 
itics as well as in food, and they are as impossible 
to account for. Witness Alexander Hamilton, the 
illegitimate son of a Scotch father and a French 
mother, a restless spirit with the shrewd sense of 
one parent and the versatility and grace of the 
other, an ardent, precocious boy, coming from the 
British island of Nevis to New York as a venture 
for his education, an orator swaying crowds as an 
undergraduate of King's College at the age of sev- 
enteen; and Thomas Jefferson with the aristocratic 
blood of the Randolphs in his veins, dining with the 



THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 177 

royal, governor's little partie quarree in Williams- 
burg, settled on his broad acres at Monticello with 
his numerous slaves and dependants, retiring in na- 
ture, silent in public, ultra-sensitive, a litterateur 
and musician, a philosopher and scientist. By all 
the canons of probability Jefferson should have 
been the aristocratic Federalist and Hamilton the 
Democratic-Republican. Dis aliter visum! 

Jefferson's democracy was not a pose or a pre- 
text: it was a deep-seated principle. He devoted 
himself wholly to the reform of the evils which 
"the shameless corruption of a portion of the rep- 
resentatives in the first and second Congresses" had 
introduced, as he wrote to his successor in the 
State Department, Edmund Randolph, "because on 
the success of such exertions the form of the gov- 
ernment is to depend." "Were parties here," he 
writes to the Virginia congressman, Giles, "divided 
merely by greediness for office as in England, to 
take a part in either would be unworthy of a reason- 
able or moral man; but where the principle of differ- 
ence is as substantial and as strongly pronounced as 
between the Republicans and Monocrats of our 
own country, I hold it as honorable to take a firm 
and decided part and as immoral to pursue a middle 
line as between the parties of honest men and 
rogues into which every country is divided." Jef- 
ferson believed in the common people as "the most 
honest and safe, tho' not always the most wise de- 



178 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

pository of the public interest." He confessed that 
he was not among those who feared the people. 
George Washington wrote: "Mankind left to them- 
selves are unfit for their own government. " John 
Marshall said: "I fear, and there is no opinion more 
degrading to the dignity of man, that those have 
truth on their side who say that man is incapable of 
governing himself. " But Thomas Jefferson never 
experienced such disillusionment. His optimism 
was too deeply founded in the philosophy of human 
perfectibility through education to be shaken even 
by revolutions, whether tiny as Shays's or mighty 
as Danton's. He didn't dread wiping the slate 
clean — of constitutions, national debts, religious 
creeds, privileged orders, or even a whole generation 
of men and women — if liberty depended on the issue 
of the contest. The September massacres in Paris 
he deplored, but rather than have seen the cause 
of the Revolution fail, he wrote to William Short, 
he would have had half the earth desolated. "Were 
there but an Adam and Eve left in every country 
and left free, it would be better than it now is." 

There is obviously much ridiculous exaggeration 
in these sentiments, just as there is in the expres- 
sions of the Federalists in the countercharges that 
the Republicans were "a composition of incongru- 
ous materials all tending to mischief, " led by "an 
atheist in religion and a fanatic in politics" (the 
words are Hamilton's). Jefferson may well have 



THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 179 

been mistaken in his estimate of the effect on the 
country of the Hamiltonian measures of funding, 
assumption, the tariff, excise duties, and the bank; 
but to make jealousy of their author the source of 
Jefferson's opposition to them is to take the effect 
for the cause. Jefferson distrusted and even de- 
tested Hamilton, not because he was a successful 
rival for the favor of the President and Congress, 
but because he was the advocate of principles which 
Jefferson believed his life long to be destructive of 
genuine democracy. One need not agree with Jef- 
ferson's political philosophy to accord him the jus- 
tice of the recognition of this truth. 

When Jefferson left the cabinet the "treasury 
phalanx" was still intrenched in Congress and the 
courts. The opposition to Hamilton's political and 
financial centralization was wide-spread but unor- 
ganized. "Are the people in your quarter as well 
contented with the proceedings of our government 
as their representatives say they are?" asked Jef- 
ferson of R. H. Lee as early as February, 1791. 
"There is a vast mass of discontent gathered in the 
South, and how and when it will break God knows. 
I look forward to it with some anxiety." To organ- 
ize this "vast mass of discontent," not only in the 
South, but all through the land, was the task which 
Jefferson undertook in the enthusiasm of his demo- 
cratic faith. He believed that the great majority 
of the American people, if they found their voice, 



180 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

would protest against the Hamiltonian policy 
through which our country was fast "galloping 
into monarchy.' } There was no further help in an 
unreformed Congress which passed Hamilton's bills 
at his bidding. "The only correction of what is 
corrupt in our present form of government/' wrote 
Jefferson to George Mason, "will be the augmenta- 
tion of the numbers in the lower house, so as to get 
a more agricultural representation, which may put 
that interest above that of the stock-jobbers." 

Jefferson had so strong a prejudice in favor of the 
agricultural classes that he was even partially rec- 
onciled to the ravages of the yellow fever in the 
cities. It swept away the "artificers" (mechanics), 
whom he considered "the panders of vice and the 
instruments by which the liberties of a country are 
generally overturned." The cultivators of the soil, 
on the other hand, he wrote to John Jay in 1785, 
"are the most valuable citizens: they are the most 
vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, 
and they are tied to their country and wedded to its 
liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds." 
Hence Jefferson's opposition to the mercantile and 
industrial interests which were encouraged by Ham- 
ilton's funding policy and protective tariff. Jeffer- 
son was a "physiocrat." If he had any French 
tutor it was not the eccentric Rousseau with his 
"virtuous savage," but the practical Turgot, who 
sought to build the state on the broad foundations 



THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 181 

of local liberties, resting on the ultimate base of the 
nation's wealth — the soil. It was not because Jef- 
ferson was "stupid" or "lacking any capacity for 
financial matters" that he rejected the whole struc- 
ture of Hamilton: industrial stocks resting on the 
bank issues, and these on the consolidated public 
debt, and all on the foundation of taxation. It was 
rather because he saw in it what to him was the 
vicious principles of a perpetual debt with its double 
curse of speculative attraction for the rich and bur- 
densome taxation for the poor. He looked askance 
on Hamilton's cunning in figures, as Luther did on 
the great Augsburg bankers, the Fuggers. "I am 
not skilled in accounts," said Brother Martin, "but 
I do not understand how 100 guldens can gain 20 
in a year, or how one can gain another, and that 
not from the soil or cattle, where success depends 
not on the wit of men but on the blessing of God." 
The skill and diligence with which Jefferson or- 
ganized the opposition to the policy of the adminis- 
tration has been recognized by his friends and his 
foes alike. "Almost never," says Professor Chan- 
ning, "has a political party been so efficiently or so 
secretly marshalled and led." Jefferson had need 
of all the patient optimism of his nature in building 
up a Republican party, for not only were the "Mon- 
ocrats" firmly intrenched in public office, with the 
private support of wealth and of that social defer- 
ence which was common in the days of our fore- 



182 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

fathers, but there was little apparent promise in 
the material out of which the new party had to be 
built. Soon after he left the cabinet Jefferson wrote 
from Monticello to Madison: "I could not have sup- 
posed when I left Philadelphia that so little of what 
was passing there could be known even at Kentucky 
as is the case here. Judging from this of the rest of 
the Union, it is evident to me that the people are 
not in a condition either to approve or disapprove 
of their government, nor consequently influence it." 
To cure this ignorance and indifference, which alone 
kept the great majority from the exercise of political 
power, Jefferson started a campaign of education. 
He did not write for the press himself, but he en- 
couraged his political henchmen to do so, with little 
scruple for the niceness of thei. speech. "Jacobin" 
papers began to appear everywhere, and the success 
of their propaganda is evidenced by the outrageous 
Sedition Act passed by John Adams's first Congress 
primarily to punish Republican editors. " Along 
with infidel philosophy," wails a Federalist organ, 
"a most powerful cause of the rapid decay of our 
government is a licentious and prostituted press." 
Another Federalist editor bemoans the fact that 
Republican papers have been established "from 
Portsmouth to Savannah." 

Jefferson was tireless in his devotion to the cause. 
He gathered his "lieutenants," Madison, Monroe, 
and Nicholas, about him at Monticello for weekend 



THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 183 

conferences. He wrote hundreds of letters to the 
growing group of Republicans in Congress and the 
State legislatures. His political clientele reached 
from the Maine wilderness to the Kentucky frontier, 
and his power to command the co-operation of his 
followers seemed almost hypnotic. " Every man 
must lay his purse and his pen under contribution, " 
he wrote to Madison in the fiercest part of the strug- 
gle with federalism; "let me pray and beseech you 
to set apart a certain portion of every post-day to 
write what may be proper for the public." 1 From 
1789 to 1793 about twenty per cent of Madison's 
correspondence was with Jefferson; from 1793 to 
1800 the percentage rose to nearly eighty. If Jef- 
ferson could so command the political service of 
James Madison, it is easy to see what his influence 
must have been on lesser men from Monroe down. 
Probably the chief cause of Jefferson's ultimate 
success was his confidence in the triumph of democ- 
racy because democracy was right. In this faith he 
never faltered. If the Jacobins of Paris plunged 
into an orgy of blood in the sacred name of democ- 
racy, it was the Jacobins and not democracy that 
should bear the stigma. If rogues in America mas- 
queraded as friends of the people, it was no argu- 

1 In the same letter Jefferson asked Madison to publish his Notes 
taken in the Federal Convention, thinking they would revive inter- 
est in the first principles of our democracy. These valuable Notes 
were sold to Congress in 1837 by Madison's widow for thirty thou- 
sand dollars, and published by the government in 1841. 



184 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ment that the real friends of the people were rogues. 
Neither the indiscretion of Genet nor the perfidy of 
Talleyrand could disturb his faith. Neither defeat 
in diplomacy nor disaster at the polls could shake 
his confidence. When his friends lost courage he 
cheered them. "The tide against our Constitution 
is unquestionably strong," he wrote to Congressman 
Giles, "but it will turn. Everything tells me so, 
and every day verifies the prediction. Hold on, 
then, like a good and faithful seaman till our brother 
sailors can rouse from their intoxication and right 
the vessel." When John Taylor, of Caroline, ad- 
vised secession from the perverse aristocrats of New 
England, who had acquired an "unrepublican ascen- 
dency," Jefferson rebuked him: "It is true that we 
are completely under the saddle of Massachusetts 
and Connecticut, and that they ride us very hard 
. . . but if in a temporary superiority of one party, 
the other is to resort to a scission of the Union, no 
federal agreement can ever exist. . . . Suppose the 
New England states alone cut off, will our nature be 
changed? Are we not men still to the south of 
that, with all the passions of men? Immediately 
we shall see a Pennsylvania and a Virginia party 
arise in the residuary confederacy, and the public 
mind will be distracted with the same party spirit. 
... A little patience and we shall see the reign of 
witches pass over, their spells dissolved, and the 
people recovering their true sight and restoring their 



THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 185 

government to its true principles. . . . For this is 
a game where principles are at stake." The echoes 
of these words are in the speeches of Webster and 
the messages of Lincoln. 

If the Constitution was maladministered, in other 
words, the remedy was not to destroy the Constitu- 
tion but to change the administration. Slowly but 
steadily Jefferson's propaganda gained ground, win- 
ning a district here and a county there. The Fed- 
eralists saw it encroaching even on their sacred pre- 
cinct of New England, and likened it to the plague 
of locusts; but they were powerless to check it. 
They had never taken the people into their con- 
fidence. They knew only how to rule, not to per- 
suade. They clung to old shibboleths and sounded 
wild cries of warning against the " political heresies 
gaming ground among us," preached by "demo- 
cratical Jeffersonians" and "itinerant Jacobins" 
holding forth in the bar-rooms of Rhode Island 
and Vermont. But they were fighting an ideal with 
memories. Jefferson asked only for "' health and a 
day." The great ally, Time, was on his side. 

But if Jefferson was an idealist in theory, in prac- 
tice he was one of the most astute and hard-headed 
politicians that ever appeared in our public life. 
The contrast between his lofty professions and his 
shrewd methods has tempted many historians to 
dismiss him rather contemptuously as a deliberate 
hypocrite or a self-deceived visionary. He was as 



186 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

elusive as Robespierre. He avoided a frontal at- 
tack for the hidden policy of sapping and mining. 
He was exasperatingly silent when his enemies were 
waiting for him to deliver himself into their hands 
by confession or apology. He was fertile in the 
suggestions that set a hundred men to work. Being 
in opposition to the administration during the full 
decade which elapsed from the triumph of Hamil- 
ton's financial policy to his own inauguration as 
President, he be.came a past master in the Mephis- 
tophelian art of destructive criticism and "slow 
disparagement." Not an act of the government 
of Washington and Adams escaped his lynx-eyed 
scrutiny. Our whole domestic and foreign policy 
during the last decade of the eighteenth century 
was a continuous text for his running sermon on 
the betrayal of democracy in the house of its glori- 
ous birth. 

The resignation of Jefferson from the cabinet co- 
incided with the development of complications be- 
tween this country and France and England, which 
were destined to involve us in two actual wars, and 
to bring us again and again to the verge of war 
before Napoleon Bonaparte was finally sent to his 
rocky exile on St. Helena. So long as the French 
Revolution was a purely domestic affair or (with 
the intervention of Austria and Prussia in 1792) 
only a continental European affair, it did not touch 
us directly. The "Francophiles" and "Anglomen" 



THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 187 

in this country could rejoice over the victory of 
Valmy together, or shudder at the slaughter of the 
aristocrats. They could chant the carmagnole or 
quote Burke's mournful prophecies with the de- 
tachment of distant, if interested, observers. But 
when Great Britain was drawn into the conflict the 
war came home to us; for Great Britain ruled our 
commerce. We proclaimed neutrality and rebuked 
Genet. But neutrality was hard to keep. 

The French Republic immediately threw open 
the French West Indian ports to our ships, a piece 
of crafty generosity to prevent the islands from 
being starved when England's powerful navy should 
cut them off from the French trade. Great Britain, 
invoking the "Rule of 1756," which forbade a bel- 
ligerent to open its ports to a nation to whom they 
had been closed in time of peace, refused to regard 
our trade with the French Indies as "neutral." 
She seized hundreds of our vessels, condemned the 
cargoes, destroyed the ships, maltreated and im- 
prisoned the seamen, or impressed them into ser- 
vice on British men-of-war. Orders in Council of 
the summer and autumn of 1793 instructed British 
captains first to stop vessels loaded with corn, flour, 
or meal bound for France, and later all ships carry- 
ing products of the French colonies or conveying 
food to French colonies. This arbitrary extension 
of the list of contraband of war was a violation 
of the code of international law. It aimed at the 



188 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

starvation of France. Great Britain determined 
that in this war " there should be no neutrals." 

In the early spring of 1794 war with Great Britain 
seemed inevitable, even to "most of our good, cool 
men of Boston," as a merchant of that town wrote 
to Secretary Knox. Dayton, of New Jersey, pro- 
posed in Congress that debts due to English sub- 
jects be sequestrated and the amount paid into the 
treasury of the United States to indemnify the 
American merchants who had been despoiled by 
England's cruisers. A bill to suspend all commer- 
cial intercourse with Great Britain until she made 
reparation for her aggressions and delivered up the 
Western fur-posts which she still held in defiance of 
the treaty of 1783, was defeated only by the casting 
vote of John Adams in the Senate. Lord Dorches- 
ter, the governor of Canada, added fuel to the 
flames by a speech to a delegation of hostile Indians 
of our Northwest, in which he tried to rouse them 
to a campaign to regain their lost lands by telling 
them that it was probable that England and America 
would be at war within a year. Congress voted 
bills to fortify our harbors and build frigates. The 
artillery service was strengthened and a levy of 
eighty thousand militia authorized. The seaport 
towns sent memorials to Congress breathing defi- 
ance. Three thousand men actually began to drill 
at Marblehead, Massachusetts. 

But other counsels prevailed. To avoid both 



THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 189 

war and the interruption of our commerce with 
England, Washington sent John Jay, chief justice 
of the supreme court, as envoy extraordinary to 
London to smooth out our difficulties. The treaty 
which Jay brought home after several months la- 
bor with the British ministers was more meagre 
even than the proverbial "half a loaf." It was 
silent on the major questions of impressments and 
the repeal of the odious Orders in Council, and 
granted only niggardly concessions to our West 
Indian traders. It was so unpopular in the seaport 
towns that Jay was burned in effigy in Boston and 
Hamilton was struck in the face by a brick-bat while 
defending it in an open-air meeting at New York. 
Yet it was ratified, by the bare two-thirds vote of 
the Senate necessary, in deference to Washington's 
conviction that the alternative was a war with 
Great Britain, which we could ill afford to wage. 

Naturally, the Republicans made great capital 
out of the Jay Treaty. They had a rejoinder now 
to the charge of their subserviency to France in the 
days of the Genet mission. "Mr. Jay's representa- 
tion was not in the stile of a firm demand for com- 
pensation for injuries done to our citizens," wrote a 
prominent Republican lawyer of Virginia to Madi- 
son, "but rather supplicating the benevolence of 
his Brittanic Majesty for relief." Jefferson called 
the treaty "an execrable thing," "an infamous act 
which is really nothing more [less] than a treaty of 



190 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

alliance between England and the Anglomen of this 
country against the Legislature 1 and the people of 
the United States." He maintained that a policy 
of firmness, by which he meant enforcement of non- 
intercourse, would have brought England to terms. 
In the light of his policy of " firmness" when applied 
a dozen years later by President Jefferson, we can 
see the superior wisdom of Washington's course, 
but to the Republicans of 1794 Jefferson's untested 
theory carried the recommendation of the prestige 
of his name. And they were fortified in their con- 
tention that the treaty embroiled rather than ame- 
liorated our foreign relations, by alienating our only 
friend in the vain attempt to conciliate our most 
dangerous enemy, when news came of its reception 
in France. 

James Monroe, a Virginia Republican, had been 
appointed minister to the French Republic at the 
same time that Jay was sent to England. His in- 
structions contained the superfluous injunction to 
cultivate good relations with France, and expressly 
warranted him to say that the projected negotiations 
with Great Britain concerned only the settlement of 

1 Because the lower house of Congress had passed a non-inter- 
course act with Great Britain, which was defeated only by John 
Adams's casting vote in the Senate. Jefferson wrote sarcastically 
of this vote: "The Senate was intended as a check on the will of the 
Representatives when too hasty. They are not only that, but com- 
pletely so on the will of the people. ... I have never known a 
measure more universally desired by the people than the passage 
of that bill." 



THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 191 

some controversies arising out of the interpretation 
of the treaty of peace of 1783, and would in no wise 
impair our alliance of 1778 with France. The nego- 
tiation, then, of a new treaty with Great Britain 
which seemed to make us her accomplice in a pred- 
atory war on -French commerce, appeared with not 
a little show of justice to the government at Paris 
as an unfriendly and even a treacherous act. It 
greatly embarrassed Monroe, who had given hos- 
tages to the French Republic in the shape of ex- 
traordinary protestations of sympathy. Whether 
he sinned more against diplomatic reserve than he 
was sinned against by Federalist disavowal is a 
question which his friends and his opponents have 
not ceased to argue. At any rate, after reading 
some sharp letters of rebuke from the acrid pen of 
Secretary Pickering, he was recalled by Washington, 
and returned to America to contribute his bit to 
the Republican cause by the publication of an 
apology for his conduct in a volume of over five 
hundred pages. Needless to say, Jefferson did not 
discourage its sale. 

While Jay was busy negotiating his treaty an 
event occurred at home which furnished more grist 
for the Republican mill. Hamilton's excise tax, 
ever since its passage in 1791, had been resisted by 
the distillers of the back counties in the Central 
and Southern States. The whiskey which they 
made was not merely a deleterious luxury. It 



/ 



192 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

served as currency in a region where bank paper 
was scarce and specie almost unknown. To tax it 
for the support of the capitalist's currency on the 
seaboard seemed like a hard and unjust discrimina- 
tion. The farmer distillers of western Pennsylvania 
broke out into a riot against the tax-collectors in 
the summer of 1794. It was the first sectional con- 
flict and the first test of the authority of the central 
government under the new Constitution. President 
Washington called fifteen thousand militia from 
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia, 
and sent them against the insurgents, who dis- 
persed before a force several times larger than they 
could hope to resist. A few of the ringleaders were 
seized and brought to trial. Two were found guilty 
of treason and condemned to death, but they were 
pardoned by the President. 

The " Whiskey War" was denounced in unmea- 
sured terms by the Republicans as a cruel parade 
of force to support an " infernal law." Jefferson 
saw no justification in " arming one part of society 
against another," and "declaring civil war the mo- 
ment before the meeting of that body [Congress] 
which has the sole right to declare war"; in " being 
so patient of the kicks and scoffs of our enemies 
[England] and rising at a feather against our friends " ; 
in "adding a million to the public debt" for the 
sake of crushing out a spirit of independence among 
our own citizens. The Federalists, on the other 






THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 193 

hand, called the prompt action of the government 
the salvation of the country. They maintained 
that the rebellion was "the legitimate fruit of the 
doctrines of the French Revolution/ ' which were 
spreading in our country and paving the way for 
anarchy and mob violence. Washington shared 
this view. On quitting the expedition at Bedford, 
he told the militia that they were engaged in a ser- 
vice which was " nothing less than to consolidate 
and preserve the blessings of that Revolution which 
at such expense of blood and treasure constituted 
us a free and independent nation." In his speech 
at the opening of Congress a few weeks later he 
attributed the disorder to "certain self-created 
societies," "combinations of men who, disregarding 
the truth that those who rouse cannot always ap- 
pease a civil commotion, disseminate suspicions, 
jealousies, and accusations of the whole Govern- 
ment." "If these self-created societies cannot be 
discountenanced," he wrote Secretary of State Ran- 
dolph, "they will destroy the Government of the 
country." 

The Republicans, with Jefferson in the lead, took 
up the cudgels for the defense of freedom of dis- 
cussion and criticism. "It is wonderful," wrote 
Jefferson, commenting on the President's speech to 
Congress, "that he should have permitted himself 
to be the organ of such an attack" on these funda- 
mental liberties. The denunciation of the Demo- 



194 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

cratic societies, he said, was "one of the extraordi- 
nary acts of boldness of which we have seen so many 
from the faction of Monocrats." As a matter of 
fact the Democrats aimed at " destroying the gov- 
ernment " of the country only as the government 
was identical with the Federalist administration. 
They wanted to "overthrow the government" in 
the European sense of the phrase. To the Consti- 
tution and the Union they professed an utter devo- 
tion, but declared that it was "the duty of every 
freeman to regard with attention and discuss with- 
out fear the conduct of public servants in every 
department of government " — a doctrine of social 
as well as political offense to the "ruling classes" of 
the eighteenth century. The "liberal communica- 
tion of Republican sentiments/ ' which they advo- 
cated as the "best antidote to political poison/ ' gen- 
erally took the form of bitter attacks on the persons 
as well as the measures of the Federalist leaders, 
who were charged openly with "an amazing want 
of republicanism. " Washington's Proclamation of 
Neutrality, for example, was condemned as an act 
of "Ottoman tyranny worthy of the grand Sultan 
of Constantinople." The militia marching under 
the eye of Hamilton to quell the whiskey riots were 
"Janissaries executing the orders of the Grand 
Vizier." All this was provoking and much of it 
puerile, but the Federalists made the mistake of 
meeting this Republican criticism with a persecution 



THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 195 

which culminated in the arbitrary acts of repression 
and censorship under John Adams. 

The refusal of Washington to serve a third term 
made the presidential election of 1796 the first na- 
tional struggle between the two parties. No for- 
mal nominations were made. Jefferson, by common 
consent, was the Republican candidate, with Aaron 
Burr as the favorite for the second place. The Fed- 
eralists were not so united. John Adams had every 
claim to be recognized as the leader of the party 
after Washington's retirement, but Alexander Ham- 
ilton had acquired the habit of dictatorship over the 
cabinet and a large part of Congress, and he was 
loath to see a man of Adams's independence in the 
presidential chair. By the end of the summer, 
however, it was generally expected that the Federal- 
ist electors would cast their votes for John Adams 
and Thomas Pinckney. The campaign was a vio- 
lent one, each party accusing the other of doctrines 
and practices destructive to the republic and of dis- 
graceful vassalage to a foreign power. Washington's 
serious warning against the "spirit of faction," in 
his Farewell Address of September 17, 1796, fell on 
unheeding ears. When the electoral votes were 
counted in January, Adams had seventy-one, Jef- 
ferson sixty-eight, Pinckney fifty-nine, and Burr 
thirty, while the forty-eight remaining votes were 
scattered among nine other names. Adams and 
Jefferson, therefore, were chosen. Jefferson, by a 



196 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

strange irony, owed his elevation to the vice-presi- 
dency to his arch-enemy, Alexander Hamilton. 1 

The vice-presidency furnished Jefferson an ideal 
vantage-ground for the consolidation of his party. 
Without any official responsibility beyond wielding 
the gavel in the Senate, he was at the seat of the 
government, where he could watch the men and 
study the measures of the administration at first 
hand, and through his indefatigable correspondence 
keep his lieutenants in the various States fully in- 
formed of the trend of national affairs. At first he 
seems to have had hopes of " converting" Adams to 
the Republican party, for he and Adams were much 
closer together than either was to Hamilton. 

The two men called on each other in Philadelphia 
before the inauguration and discussed the foreign 
situation. Adams expressed the wish that Jefferson 
might undertake a special mission to France, "if the 
people would be willing to spare him for a short 
time." When Jefferson declined the honor, Adams 
asked him to sound his friend Madison on the prop- 
osition. A few days later Adams and Jefferson were 
dining with Washington, and left the house together. 
"As soon as we got into the street," says Jefferson, 

1 Hamilton was suspected by the New England Federalists of a 
plot to bring in Pinckney just ahead of Adams by getting one or 
two Federalist electors from the Southern States to leave Adams's 
name off their ballots. To thwart this trick sixteen New England 
electors wrote the name of Ellsworth or Jay for the second place on 
the ticket, thus reducing Pinckney's vote not only far below Adams's 
but below Jefferson's, too. 






THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 197 

"I told him the event of my negotiations with Mr. 
Madison. He immediately said that on consulta- 
tion some objections to that nomination had been 
raised . . . and was going on with excuses which 
evidently embarrassed him, when we came to Fifth 
Street, where our roads separated. ... He never 
after that said one word to me on the subject or 
ever consulted me as to any measures of the gov- 
ernment." So it was Adams, not Jefferson, who 
abandoned the idea of "fusion." He had had his 
first cabinet meeting that morning ! 

A few days after the inauguration news came that 
the Federalist minister, C. C. Pinckney, whom 
Washington had sent to Paris to succeed Monroe, 
had been denied an audience by the Directory and 
refused even the permission to remain on the soil 
of France. Adams, while resenting the insult in a 
spirited message to Congress, was sincerely anxious 
to preserve peace with France. He nominated John 
Marshall, a Virginia Federalist, and Elbridge Gerry, 
of Massachusetts, a recent convert to Republican- 
ism, to join Pinckney in a commission to Paris to 
bring the French Directory to reason. The com- 
missioners arrived in Paris in the early winter of 
1797, but their treatment was even worse than 
Pinckney's had been. The wily Talleyrand, minis- 
ter of foreign affairs, did not deign to receive or 
recognize them officially, but instead sent obscure 
agents, who told them that no negotiations could be 



198 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

begun until an apology was made for the language 
of President Adams's message to Congress and a 
substantial sum of money paid to the directors. 
Marshall and Pinckney quitted France in high in- 
dignation, while Gerry was flattered into remaining 
as a persona grata to continue the negotiations. He 
was really a hostage in Talleyrand's hands. When 
the news of this fresh indignity reached America 
early in March, 1798, Adams sent a message to 
Congress which was virtually a call to arms. Mar- 
shall landed the next month, and was received like 
a Regulus returned from Carthage. He was ac- 
claimed in the streets and feted at banquets. The 
toast "Millions for defense, but not one cent for 
tribute" ran through the States as the slogan of 
America's defiance. 

The Republicans tried to make the best of a poor 
case. Jefferson called the President's message "in- 
sane." The Federalists, he declared, were deter- 
mined to have a war with France, else why their 
readiness to take the reported insults of a trio of 
irresponsible swindlers (Talleyrand's agents) as the 
act of the French Government. Did not Talley- 
rand's invitation to Gerry to stay in Paris show 
that he was desirous of reaching an understanding 
with the United States ? The British were our real 
enemies. Even at that moment their depredations 
on our commerce, as the books of the merchants of 
Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore showed, were 



THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 199 

far more serious than the Frenchmen's. Jay's " in- 
famous" treaty was the root of all the trouble. 
And it was a futile sacrifice of honor, too. In the 
very first year after its promulgation, the Republican 
press claimed, the British had seized three hundred 
American ships and impressed one thousand Ameri- 
can seamen. But the Republican case broke down 
completely when Adams ordered Secretary Pickering 
to send to Congress, and Congress voted to publish 
the correspondence of the commissioners with the 
French agents. 

The "X Y Z" correspondence 1 kindled the war 
spirit in America. Congress in a score of acts 
passed before midsummer of 1798 enlarged the 
army, built and purchased ships, created a navy 
department, strengthened the coast defenses, sta- 
tioned squadrons in the West Indies, authorized our 
vessels to take French privateers and ships of war, 
and formally repealed the treaty of alliance of 1778. 
Washington was made commander of the army with 
the right to name his staff of major-generals. "On 
the Fourth of July," wrote Troup to Rufus King, 
"New York City resembled a camp rather than a 
commercial port." Loyal addresses poured in on 
the President. The theatres and concert-halls rang 
with the new patriotic songs, "Hail, Columbia," and 



1 So called because Pickering substituted these letters for the 
names of Talleyrand's agents when he sent the correspondence to 
Congress. 



200 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

"Adams and Liberty. " For one brief hour John 
Adams was popular. 

Then came a series of acts by the Federalist Con- 
gress in June and July, which were dictated by a 
mixture of panic and arrogance, acts not unlike those 
of the French Jacobins, whom the Federalists held 
in abhorrence. A Naturalization Act required aliens 
who had come to America since 1795 to reside here 
fourteen years before they could become citizens. 
Alien Acts gave the President the power to remove 
all "such aliens as he should judge dangerous to the 
peace and safety of the United States." A Sedi- 
tion Act imposed the penalty of fine and imprison- 
ment on all who should forcibly oppose the execu- 
tion of the laws of the United States, or should 
publish a false or malicious writing against the gov- 
ernment of the United States, the President, or 
Congress. The Naturalization Act, while harsh, 
was entirely within the constitutional powers of 
Congress. The Alien Acts, while causing some 
foreigners to leave the country, were not enforced 
in a single instance by President Adams. But the 
Sedition,. Act led to what John Randolph called "the 
American Reign of Terror." Men were indicted, 
fined, and imprisoned for such criticism of the ex- 
ecutive as nowadays would be thought tame and 
comical: for saying that Adams was "hardly in the 
infancy of political blundering," or for expressing 
the pious wish, as a New Jersey Republican did, 



THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 201 

that the wadding of a cannon fired in honor of John 
Adams might lodge in the seat of his breeches. 
The Republican editors and printers were perse- 
cuted with an almost ferocious zeal by the courts. 
A Federalist judge of the supreme court, Samuel 
Chase, was so savage in the prosecution of the trials 
that he was later impeached by a Republican House 
of Representatives. 

Jefferson and his followers protested against the 
Alien and Sedition Acts as a clear violation of the 
Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech 
and press, and which reserves to the States all 
powers not expressly delegated to the central gov- 
ernment. The federal courts, they declared, had 
a right to take cognizance only of those criminal 
cases which were mentioned in the Constitution. 
The Constitution was a compact between the 
States which federal officials had no right to assume 
to interpret definitively. These ideas were em- 
bodied most clearly in a set of resolutions prepared 
by Jefferson for introduction into the legislature of 
North Carolina, but transferred to Kentucky, in 
December, 1798. The Kentucky Resolutions de- 
clared the Alien and Sedition Acts "void and of 
no force," and called upon the "co-States" to join 
with Kentucky in protest. When the Northern 
States replied unfavorably and the Southern States 
not at all, the Kentucky Legislature adopted a sec- 
ond set of resolutions from Jefferson's pen (Novem- 



202 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ber, 1799) declaring that "nullification" by the 
State "sovereignties" was the "rightful remedy" for 
federal usurpation. This was the first announce- 
ment of the policy which South Carolina put into 
operation a generation later, and which a generation 
later still grew into the formidable doctrine of 
secession. 

Jefferson has been not only blamed for encourag- 
ing disunion in the Kentucky Resolutions, but also 
ridiculed for entertaining baseless fears. Either 
charge is hard to prove in the light of contemporary 
evidence. Jefferson was far ahead of the public 
sentiment of the day in his devotion to the Union. 
He wrote to Elbridge Gerry a month after the reso- 
lutions were passed: "I do with a sincere zeal wish 
an inviolable preservation of our Federal Constitu- 
tion according to the true sense in which it was 
adopted by the States." To the sincerity of this 
vow his voluminous writings bear testimony. He 
rebuked speculations on disunion, whether they 
came from friends like Taylor, or enemies like 
Hamilton and Wolcott. His object in the Ken- 
tucky Resolutions was decentralization, not dis- 
union. Indeed, it was just exactly the destruction 
of the Federal Union through its conversion into a 
consolidated despotism that he believed he was 
working to prevent. He considered the Alien and 
Sedition Acts " merely an experiment on the Ameri- 
can mind to see how far it will bear an avowed vio- 



THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 203 

lation of the Constitution/' and thought that if they 
were swallowed by the people other acts would follow, 
such as a life term for President and senators, or "the 
transfer of the succession to the President's heirs." 
"That Jefferson ever wrote such folly/' says Mc- 
Master, "is of itself enough to deprive him of every 
possible claim to statesmanship." But we have 
abundant testimony that Hamilton was looking for 
"the crisis/' even if it came by arms, which should 
convert the "frail and worthless fabric of our Con- 
stitution" into something nearer the admired Eng- 
lish model. He and King and Gouverneur Morris 
and other Federalists corresponded quite frankly on 
the prospects of establishing an American empire 
on "foundations much firmer than have yet been 
devised." Morris confessed a few years after Ham- 
ilton's death that "Hamilton disliked the Constitu- 
tion, believing all Republican governments radically 
defective." He had assented to the Constitution 
because he thought it "might hold us together for 
a time; but he trusted that in the changes and 
chances of time we should be involved in some war" 
[the "crisis"] "which might strengthen our Union 
and nerve the executive." Jefferson may have, let 
his fears get the better of his judgment, just as his 
Federalist opponents did when, like Uriah Tracy, 
they spoke of the Democrats as "worthy of the gal- 
lows," or, like Fisher Ames, that such a government 
as Jefferson preferred "would soon ensure war with 



204 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Great Britain, a Cisalpine Alliance with France, 
plunder and anarchy." But to call Jefferson's fears 
groundless or the expression of them "folly" is 
rather to estimate the security of the Union of 1798 
by the results of the struggle of 1861-5. 

Passions ran high in those closing years of the 
eighteenth century, when the moderating effect of 
Washington's presence was removed. "Men who 
had been lifelong friends," wrote Jefferson, "crossed 
the street to avoid saluting each other." We were 
actually at war with France on the ocean, yet the 
French faction in America were loudly insisting that 
the enemy was England. There was little in fact to 
choose between the two countries in the matter of 
depredations on our commerce. Fortunately for 
our peace, offers of conciliation came from France. 
Talleyrand wanted only to embroil us with Great 
Britain. When he saw the effect of the X Y Z let- 
ters on America he changed his tactics. With char- 
acteristic effrontery he denied all connection with 
his insulting agents and assured our envoy at The 
Hague that a minister from the United States would 
be received in Paris "with the respect due to a free, 
independent, and powerful nation." President 
Adams, to the disgust of the Hamiltonians, who 
were bent on war, 1 and to his own eternal credit, 

1 It is hard to absolve Hamilton from the charge of deliberately 
fomenting the war spirit in order that he, as ranking major-general 
and commander in the field, might have an army to use in his cher- 
ished plan of co-operation with the Venezuelan adventurer, Miranda, 



THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 205 

again sent a commission to Paris, in October, 1799. 
Before they arrived, however, Napoleon Bonaparte 
had overthrown the corrupt directory by the coup 
d'etat of Brumaire, and made himself master of 
France under the title of First Consul. Bonaparte 
posed as a republican and a reconciler. He sought 
peace to prepare for conquest. He was a man of 
armies and diplomacy, a continental man. Sea 
power or the economics of trade he never under- 
stood. He boasted that he would "make commerce 
manoeuvre like battalions." America was remote 
and negligible as yet. Napoleon offered to release 
us from the treaty of alliance of 1778 if we would 
waive our claims on France for unlawful seizures of 
our vessels. The formal convention restoring peace 
between the United States and France was signed 
September 30, 1800. 

Our country was already in the midst of another 
violent presidential campaign in which Adams and 

in freeing the Spanish colonies and bringing them under Anglo- 
American influence to balance the power of France. Hamilton wrote 
to Miranda in August, 1798, the very month that Talleyrand was 
offering peace to our minister in Holland: "The plan in my opinion 
ought to be a fleet of Great Britain and an army of the United 
States, and a government for the liberated territory agreeable to both 
the cooperators, about which there will be no difficulty. To arrange the 
plan a competent authority from Great Britain to some person here 
is the best expedient. Your presence here in that case will be ex- 
tremely essential. We are raising an army of about 12,000 men. 
General Washington has resumed his station at the head of the 
armies. I am second in command. 

" With esteem and regard, 

"Alexander Hamilton." 



206 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Jefferson were again the candidates, with C. C. 
Pinckney and Aaron Burr for second place. The 
Federalists were torn with faction. The persecu- 
tions under the Sedition Act had neutralized the 
brief popularity of the administration after the 
X Y Z disclosures. Adams's courageous peace with 
France had brought down anathemas on his head. 
Hamilton, with his chances of military glory gone 
glimmering and his friends removed from the cabi- 
net, wrote a bitter invective against John Adams 
to prove his unsuitableness for the chief magistracy 
— and then urged the Federalists to vote for him. 
War taxes for a war that was never declared and 
that was unrecognized by half the country increased 
the dissatisfaction with the administration. The 
physician for the country's ills was already at hand, 
said Jefferson, in the person of the tax-collector. 
The Federalists hung together in a discordant unity 
to prevent the calamity of a Republican triumph; 
but they were powerless to check the rising tide. 
Every local election in New England and the Middle 
States showed an increase in the vote, and the in- 
crease was largely in favor of the Republicans. Jef- 
ferson was tireless in his propaganda and unwearied 
in his patience. He noted the gain of a Republican 
congressman here and the State assemblyman there; 
he cheered Madison with the report of "a consider- 
able change working in the minds of the people to 
the eastward'' [New England], and congratulated 



THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 207 

Burr on the visible "dawn of change" in his State 
of New York. He had full confidence that Repub- 
licanism was growing like a sound tissue to possess 
the whole body politic. Patience and labor! till 
"time has been given to the States to recover from 
the temporary frenzy into which they have been 
decoyed, to rally round the Constitution and rescue 
it from the destruction with which it has been 
threatened." Jefferson hoped even to convert the 
Federalists, while they expected only to defeat and 
awe the "Jacobins." It was a battle between in- 
trenched privilege and insurgent democracy — be- 
tween the expiring eighteenth century and the 
dawning nineteenth. 

The battle was close and fiercely fought. Jeffer- 
son, as leader of the "opposition," was subjected to 
extravagant abuse. He was accused of having 
robbed a widow and her children of an estate of 
ten thousand pounds; of preaching class hatred and 
"Jacobinical phrensy"; of slandering George Wash- 
ington and ridiculing the Christian religion. The 
direst predictions were made in the event of his 
election. Government would be at an end and 
civic virtue a thing of the past. One panic-stricken 
Federalist declared that every decent man would 
have to go abroad armed "to defend his property, 
his wife, and children . . . from the daggers of 
his Jacobin neighbors." Old ladies in Connecticut 
hid their family Bibles, believing that the first act 



208 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

of the " atheistic' ' President would be a decree con- 
fiscating all copies of the Sacred Book. Following 
his custom, Jefferson ignored these attacks. While 
he was contradicting one campaign lie ; he said, they 
would publish twenty new ones. 

With his usual political sagacity, Jefferson de- 
clared that as New York City went the election 
would go. And so it was. Aaron Burr arranged 
an attractive slate of the city candidates for the 
State legislature in the spring election of 1800. 
They carried the city and insured a Republican 
majority in the legislature which was to choose the 
presidential electors in November. As a last resort 
to save a few of New York's votes for the Federalist 
ticket, Hamilton wrote a letter to Governor Jay, 
advising him to reconvene the old legislature and 
put through a law for the choice of presidential 
electors by districts. He confessed that it was not 
a "regular or delicate proceeding/' but urged that 
"scruples of delicacy and propriety ought to be laid 
aside" when it was a question of preventing the 
election to the presidency of "an atheist in religion 
and a fanatic in politics." Governor Jay filed the 
letter with the indorsement: "Proposing measures 
for party purposes which I think it would not be- 
come me to adopt." 

When the electoral votes were counted in January, 
Jefferson and Burr had seventy-three apiece, to 
sixty-five for Adams and sixty-four for Pinckney. 



THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 209 

Not a single Republican elector had been thoughtful 
enough to vote another name than Burr's for second 
choice, so Jefferson and Burr were technically tied 
for the presidency, and the decision was thrown 
into the House of Representatives. Burr knew that 
every elector had intended to vote for him for Vice- 
President, and, had he been an honorable man, he 
would have given first place to Jefferson immedi- 
ately. But Burr was not an honorable man. He 
allowed himself to be put forward by a caucus of the 
Federalists in the House against the man of his own 
party who was obviously the choice of the nation. 

When the balloting began in the House on Feb- 
ruary 11, 1801, Vermont and Maryland were equally 
divided, and lost their vote. Of the other fourteen 
States six voted for Burr (New Hampshire, Massa- 
chusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, 
and South Carolina), and the remaining eight for 
Jefferson. Nine States were the majority necessary 
for an election. Day after day the balloting was 
repeated with the same result. There were rumors 
that the Federalists would continue the deadlock 
till the 4th of March, and then devolve the presi- 
dency on John Marshall, who had just been ap- 
pointed by John Adams as chief justice of the 
supreme court. The two great States of Pennsylva- 
nia and Virginia, with their Republican governors, 
McKean and Monroe, were ready to appeal to arms 
rather than see Jefferson cheated out of the presi- 



210 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

dehcy. Hamilton, too, used his influence in behalf 
of Jefferson, not that he loved Jefferson more, but 
that he loved Burr less. At last the Federalists in 
the House gave up the hopeless policy of obstruc- 
tion. On the thirty-sixth ballot the Federalist 
members of all the States except New England cast 
blanks, and Jefferson was elected by a vote of ten 
States to four. 1 

Ousted from the presidency and their majority 
gone in Congress, the Federalists attempted to keep 
control of the third branch of the government by a 
reorganization of the judiciary in the last days of 
Adams's term. A law was passed creating sixteen 
new federal judgeships, with a number of marshals, 
attorneys, and clerks. Adams was busy until 
nine o'clock on the evening of March 3, signing the 
new commissions. Before sunrise on the morning 
of the 4th he drove away from the White House, 
and the reign of Federalism was ended. 2 

1 The vote of Maryland was still divided, and Delaware had only 
one representative in Congress, the Federalist Bayard, whose vote 
could at any moment have elected Jefferson. Jefferson, without 
making any "capitulation" to the Federalists, seems to have let it 
be understood among them that he would not disturb the main 
institutions of the government if elected (bank, tariff, army and 
navy). He had no hard feeling toward Burr, who, to his credit be 
it said, did not attempt to influence the members of the House in 
their choice. The direst effects of the choice of "a feeble and false 
enthusiast, a profligate without character or property (!)" for 
President were predicted by the unreconciled Federalists of New 
England. 

2 Two persistent fables have clung to the last days of Adams's 
presidency. One to the effect that Levi Lincoln, Jefferson's desig- 
nated attorney-general, appeared with watch in hand, in the office 



THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 211 

We have tarried so long over the great battle of 
1800 because it is the central fact of Thomas Jeffer- 
son's career. From his entrance into the cabinet 
in March, 1790, to his entrance into the White 
House eleven years later, he waged an uninterrupted 
campaign against what he believed to be a deliber- 
ate plot to subvert the Constitution and nullify the 
Declaration of Independence. For him the victory 
of 1800 was the vindication of the principles of 
1776. He was not overscrupulous in his methods, 
though he never descended to such trickery as Ham- 
ilton's advice to Governor Jay. He gave secret en- 
couragement, if not open support, to such writers 
as Freneau, Bache, Duane, and Callender, whose 
slanderous articles on the Federalist leaders tried 
their patience to the utmost. His compilation of 
the Anas, with their gossipy depreciation of the 
deeds and motives of his political adversaries, was 
unchivalrous. His correspondence too often shows 

of the State Department at midnight of March 3, to order John 
Marshall to discontinue signing the commissions of the new judges 
— the "midnight judges of the Duke of Braintree" [Adams], as 
the Republicans called them. But Jefferson used the term "mid- 
night" in connection with these new officers, just as we use the 
phrase "the eleventh hour," to mean late. In a letter of March 24 
he speaks of "Adams's midnight appointments, to wit, all after De- 
cember 12" (the day on which the defeat of the Federalists was cer- 
tainly known) . The other story is that Adams left the White House 
before dawn of the day Jefferson entered, in order to avoid the 
humiliation of meeting his successor. But the reason for Adams's 
hasty departure was the sudden death of his son Charles at New 
York. He entertained no ill feeling toward Jefferson, and wrote to 
him a few days after the inauguration, "heartily wishing" him a 
"quiet and prosperous administration." 



212 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

a trace of that satisfaction which men who are of a 
retiring disposition take in the unburdening of their 
grievances to their intimate friends. But for all 
these faults of disposition or judgment, there was 
nothing mean or base in Thomas Jefferson. He was 
an idealist through and through. His whole being 
was devoted to his cause. And it is not the least 
testimony to his labors for democracy that since 
the Republican triumph which ushered in the nine- 
teenth century every political party that has gained 
or sought the direction of our government has made 
its appeal to the people of America. 



CHAPTER VIII 
JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 

A just and solid republican government maintained here will be a 
standing monument and example for the aim and imitation of the 
people of other countries; and I join with you in the hope and belief 
that they will see from our example that a free government is of all others 
the most majestic. (Jefferson to John Dickinson, March 6, 1801.) 

Thomas Jefferson was approaching his fifty-eighth 
birthday when he entered the White House. The 
vigor of his tall spare frame was somewhat disguised 
by a studied negligence of dress and carelessness of 
posture; and the incessant activity of his forceful, 
orderly mind was concealed beneath an ostentatious 
indifference to social conventions. He was anxious 
that the triumphant democracy of which he was the 
oracle should avoid all appearance of conformity 
to the Old World traditions of pomp and ceremony. 
He held no stiff levees like Washington's, but was 
easily accessible to callers. In place of the formal 
"speech from the throne" to the Houses of Congress, 
with their formal reply delivered by a delegation, he 
substituted a written message to be read by the 
clerk of the House. He answered a petition from 
the merchants of New Haven with his own pen. 
He received the British minister, Anthony Merry, 

213 



214 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

in a dressing-gown with slippers run down at the 
heels, to the great chagrin of that gentleman in cor- 
rect diplomatic tenue. To the minister's secre- 
tary he made an appearance very much like that of 
"a tall, large-boned farmer" — a characterization 
which probably would have pleased Jefferson rather 
than nettled him. 

Yet there was nothing coarse or boorish about 
the "Jeffersonian simplicity," nothing like those 
revellings of King Mob amid unlimited orange 
punch which Webster and Story describe with a 
kind of tolerant disgust in their accounts of the 
inauguration of Andrew Jackson a generation later. 
Jefferson was a man of rare accomplishments and 
fine tastes, a scholar, a diplomat, a musician. He 
was the very soul of hospitality, keeping in the 
White House as at Monticello an open table at which 
his guests were cheered by good fare and charmed 
by brilliant discourse. His wine bills for the first 
year of the presidency were two thousand seven 
hundred and ninety-seven dollars and thirty-eight 
cents. His pride in a fine stable did credit to the 
traditions of the Virginia aristocracy. "His inter- 
ests," says Henry Adams, "were those of a liberal 
European nobleman like the Due de Liancourt," a 
welcome visitor at Monticello. "He seemed," says 
Adams again, "during his entire life to breathe with 
perfect satisfaction nowhere except in the liberal 
literary and scientific air of the Paris of 1789." The 



JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 215 

demagogues of the Paris of 1792, the Marats and 
Desmoulins and Huberts with whom his Federalist 
opponents compared him, would have filled him 
with disgust. For he had none of the arts of the 
popular orator and shrank from the rude blows of 
public controversy with a sensitiveness which some 
of his biographers have called timidity. 

Jefferson regarded the victory of 1800 not as a 
personal triumph or a mere change of administra- 
tion only. It was a political revolution, furnishing 
the first opportunity for true Republicans to admin- 
ister a government professedly republican, but per- 
verted by Hamilton and the Essex men 1 into a sem- 
blance of monarchy. The country had found itself 
in the election of 1800. To use a simile which Jef- 
ferson never tired of, the ship of state had righted 
itself to an even keel. Ten years of vigilant labor 
and patient persuasion had organized the good sense 
of the masses into a compact party, and now deliv- 
ered into the hands of that party those branches of 
the national government (executive and legislative) 
which were in the people's gift. Jefferson's inaugu- 
ral address was a hymn of reconciliation. Harmony 
was restored except for the few malcontents in New 

J The "Essex Junto" was a name applied to a group of ultra- 
Federalists (Ames, Cabot, Pickering, Parsons, Higginson) whose 
activities lay chiefly in Essex County, Massachusetts. Though 
their faithful followers numbered no more than five hundred, accord- 
ing to Ames's confession, their wealth, social eminence, and alliance 
with the Congregational clergy gave them a great influence in the 
politics of Massachusetts and New England. 



216 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

England who were destined to dwindle into a little 
factious group of leaders without a following. "We 
have called by different names bretheren of the 
same principles/ ' cried Jefferson. "We are all re- 
publicans; we are all federalists !" He spoke of the 
republic as "in the full tide of a successful experi- 
ment " under a government "which has so far kept 
us free and firm." He urged that we "pursue with 
courage and confidence our principles/ ' and pledged 
himself to the "preservation of the general Govern- 
ment in its whole constitutional vigor as the sheet 
anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad." 
Not a word of the bitter battle of 1800 or the ten 
years opposition to the "vigor" of the general gov- 
ernment under the Federalists! Not a hint that 
the authors of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolu- 
tions had come to sit in the seats vacated by Timo- 
thy Pickering and John Adams! What did these 
"amiable professions of harmony" mean when the 
whole hated structure of the Hamiltonian finances, 
with debt, bank, funds, excise, stood intact; when 
the Naturalization Act and the Enemies Alien Act 
still disgraced the statute-books; when the newly 
appointed Federalist judges were stretching out 
their hands for their "midnight" commissions; when 
the tax-gatherer was trying to meet the unprece- 
dented budget of over eleven million dollars caused 
by the "needless quarrel" with France over the 
X Y Z "frenzy"? 



JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 217 

If we turn to Jefferson's private correspondence 
during the few months after he entered the presi- 
dential office, we find in it little that matches the 
roseate view of reconciliation and harmony ex- 
pressed in the inaugural address. He wrote to 
Monroe three days after the inauguration that he 
would never turn an inch out of his way to placate 
the Federalist leaders; and to General Gates a day 
later that he hoped to make up an administration 
which should "bid defiance to the plans of opposi- 
tion meditated" by them. He would rebuke "Mr. 
Adams' indecent conduct in crowding nominations 
after he knew they were not for himself/' by treat- 
ing such nominations "as nullities." To his attor- 
ney-general, Levi Lincoln, he wrote in midsummer 
deploring the "inflexibility of the federalist spirit" 
in Connecticut, and asked for a list of "Essex men" 
in office in New England with a view to their re- 
moval. Commenting on his first annual message 
of December, 1801, in a letter to Dupont de 
Nemours, he excused himself for not having at- 
tacked the financial system inherited from Alexan- 
der Hamilton. "It mortifies me," he wrote, "to be 
strengthening principles which I deem radically 
vicious, but this vice is entailed on us by the first 
error. In other parts of our government I hope 
we shall be able by degrees to introduce sound prin- 
ciples and make them habitual." The leaders of 
the Federalists he considered incorrigible, but their 



218 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

followers might be won. As Henry Adams neatly 
says: " Jefferson intended to entiee the flock with 
one hand and belabor the shepherds with the other." 
When Jefferson's first Congress adjourned on 
May 3, 1802, though there was a Republican ma- 
jority in both Houses, the sum total of its onslaught 
on the Federalist measures against which the Re- 
publicans had protested for a decade was the repeal 
of the Judiciary Act, the Naturalization Act, and 
the internal taxes. Economies were introduced in 
army and navy by Jefferson's able secretary of the 
treasury, Albert Gallatin, a budget system calling 
for specific appropriations was introduced, and pro- 
vision was made for setting aside enough of the 
annual income as a sinking fund to extinguish the 
debt by the year 1817. But no steps were taken to 
modify the structure of government or to guard 
against those centralizing tendencies which the Re- 
publicans professed to detest. The Alien and Sedi- 
tion Acts expired by limitation in 1801, but the 
Enemies Alien Act remained, and still remains, on 
our statute-books. The central doctrine of Jeffer- 
son's political creed was that the " general Govern- 
ment" must not be the final judge of its own pow- 
ers. Such a government he had lately called a 
" despotism." Yet his Republican Congress took 
no steps toward initiating an amendment to the 
Constitution by which the justices of the supreme 
court should have a limited or elective term or 



JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 219 

should be removable on petition by Congress. Jef- 
ferson spoke bitterly of the Federalists " retiring 
into the Judiciary as a stronghold* from which they 
might batter down all the works of republicanism; 
yet he left the stronghold unattacked. Where was 
the spirit of the Kentucky Resolutions ! 

Uncompromising Republicans of the South, like 
John Randolph, John Taylor, Macon, and Giles, 
attributed Jefferson's acquiescence in the status quo 
to the influence of Secretary Madison's still uni- 
formed Federalism, while the Federalists rejoiced at 
the signs of approaching disaffection in the Republi- 
can ranks. It is hard to know just what the mo- 
tives for Jefferson's " inconsistency" were, for the 
story that he promised the Federalists of the House 
not to interfere with the financial institutions of 
their party, in order to secure his election over Burr, 
he categorically denied. The most charitable view 
of the matter is that Jefferson was so convinced of 
the change of heart of all but a negligible remnant 
of Federalists that he thought the Constitution was 
in no further danger of being " perverted into mon- 
archy." After all, it was not the instrument that 
mattered so much as the character of the men in 
whose hands the instrument was. The least chari- 
table view of Jefferson's behavior is that it was of a 
piece with the "ineradicable duplicity" of mind 
which made him say one thing to the public to 
establish his popularity, and work another course 



220 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

in private to preserve his domination. At any rate, 
the majority of Jefferson's biographers have adopted 
the shrewd and pitiless judgment of his quondam 
colleague, Hamilton, written to persuade Bayard to 
cast the vote of Delaware for Jefferson instead of 
Burr: "Nor is it true that Jefferson is zealot enough 
to do anything in pursuance of his principles which 
will contravene his popularity or his interest . . . 
and the probable result of such a temper is the 
preservation of systems, though originally opposed, 
which, once being established, could not be over- 
turned without danger to the person who did it. 
To my mind, a true estimate of Mr. Jefferson's 
character warrants the expectation of a temporizing 
rather than a violent system." 

But apart from nice calculations of political phi- 
losophy or personal popularity, practical questions 
arose early in Jefferson's administration which made 
it imperative for him to preserve the " general Gov- 
ernment in its whole constitutional vigor." We 
have seen in a former chapter what efforts Jefferson 
made, while minister at Paris, to curb the pirates 
of the Barbary Coast. He failed to enlist the sup- 
port of the maritime Powers of Europe, and, worse 
than that, our own government consented to pay 
ransom money and tribute all through the adminis- 
trations of Washington and Adams. Early in Jef- 
ferson's term the crisis came in the Mediterranean. 
The Dey of Algiers compelled Captain Bainbridge, 



JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 221 

who had just brought him tribute money from 
America, to raise the Algerian standard to the mast- 
head of the American ship and go on an errand for 
him to the Sultan of Constantinople. A few months 
after this humiliating event, the Bashaw of Tripoli 
demanded an increase of the meagre tribute of 
eighty-three thousand dollars, which he was receiv- 
ing from America, and on being refused, declared 
war on the United States, more barbaricOj by chop- 
ping down the flagpole in front of the American 
consulate. 

Jefferson and Gallatin both deplored the necessity 
of war: the former because it disturbed his dream 
of a new and peaceful empire on this side of the 
Atlantic, the latter because it interfered with his 
programme of economics for the reduction of the 
national debt. But theoretical and practical ob- 
jections both had to yield to the exigencies of the 
situation. Instead of laying up our few war-ships 
in the eastern branch of the Potomac, where they 
could be taken care of by "a single set of plunder- 
ers/ J and roofing them over to protect them from 
the sun and rain, Jefferson had to despatch several 
expeditions under Dale, Morris, Preble, and Rodgers, 
to the Mediterranean. The work of chastising the 
Barbary pirates lasted through the four years of his 
first administration, but when it was done the 
Mediterranean was as safe for commerce as the 
English Channel. The brilliant exploits of Decatur, 



222 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Preble, and Somers aroused the admiration of 
Europe and wrote a second chapter in the history 
of our navy, not less glorious than the one opened 
by John Manley and John Paul Jones. But they 
did not convert Jefferson and his secretary to a 
strong naval policy. The President advocated in- 
stead of war frigates a number of small gunboats for 
coast defense, which could be drawn up on land like 
a fisherman's dory, while the Treasury Department 
emphasized the temporary nature of the increased 
tariff duties necessitated by the war by setting them 
apart as a special " Mediterranean fund." Jeffer- 
son's amphibious navy caused much contemptuous 
merriment to his opponents, and his policy of "un- 
preparedness " has been held directly responsible by 
most of our historians for the humiliations of his 
second term, which culminated in the War of 1812 
with Great Britain. 

Determined as Jefferson was, however, to keep us 
free from imperialistic ambitions abroad, he was an 
ardent apostle of a greater America at home. For 
almost a score of years before he became President 
we can trace in his writings these twin ideas of a 
sundered America and a vast America. He was an 
advocate of the principle which found its classic 
expression near the close of his long life in the Mon- 
roe Doctrine. Even before Washington had fore- 
shadowed that doctrine in his Farewell Address of 
1796, we find Jefferson writing from Paris (1787) 



JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 223 

recommending peaceful commercial relations with 
European Powers, without " entangling alliances." 
This was the text of his policy as secretary of state 
in Washington's first administration. So, too, in 
the Paris days, we find him encouraging the Ameri- 
can traveller, Ledyard, to cross Siberia and return 
to his New England home by way of the great un- 
explored West of our continent. In the same year 
that Captain Grey entered the Columbia River 
(1792), Jefferson urged the American Philosophical 
Society to raise funds by subscription for the explo- 
ration of the trans-Mississippi country (which be- 
longed to Spain). The English settlements on the 
Atlantic coast were the "nest" from which the 
whole American continent was to be populated. 
He already saw in imagination a people of one 
hundred millions here — the United States of the 
early twentieth century. 

Soon after Jefferson's election to the presidency 
the opportunity came for him to render the greatest 
service of his administration and one of the greatest 
services of the nineteenth century to the American 
people. The reader will recall how the Citizen Con- 
sul Bonaparte, fresh from his triumph over the Aus- 
trians at Marengo, signed the convention restoring 
peace between the French Republic and the United 
States, September 30, 1800. The very next day he 
concluded the treaty of San Ildefonso with Spain, 
by which he gained the retrocession of the vast ter- 



224 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ritory of Louisiana, which Louis XV had handed 
over to his ally, Spain, at the close of the long strug- 
gle between France and England for the possession 
of the St. Lawrence and Mississippi valleys (1762). 
"The treaty of October 1," says Henry Adams, "un- 
did the treaty of September 30." As soon as it was 
known in Washington that Napoleon had acquired 
Louisiana, Jefferson began to take alarm. "Spain 
is ceding Louisiana to France," he wrote to Rufus 
King in London, May 14, 1801, "an inauspicious 
circumstance for us." And to Monroe, a few days 
later, he wrote: "There is considerable reason to 
apprehend that Spain cedes Louisiana and the 
Floridas to France. It is a policy very unwise in 
both, and very ominous to us." Napoleon's cher- 
ished plan of rebuilding a French colonial empire in 
America developed apace in the brief interval of 
peace which the years 1801 and 1802 brought 
to France. He sent his brother-in-law, General 
Leclerc, with ten thousand troops to reduce the 
island of Santo Domingo as a preliminary to occu- 
pying New Orleans. His plan was to oust the 
Americans from their lucrative trade with the An- 
tilles, and joining the islands of the Caribbean Sea 
with the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and the Mis- 
sissippi Valley, to restore the colonial empire which 
France had lost a generation before. 

Leclerc and twice ten thousand men were destined 
to succumb to the desperate resistance of the negro 



JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 225 

chieftain, Toussaint Louverture, and to the deadly 
ravages of the yellow fever in Santo Domingo, before 
a year had passed. But Jefferson could not foresee 
how fate would work to frustrate Napoleon's ambi- 
tions. In great alarm he wrote, on April 18, 1802, 
to Robert R. Livingston, our minister in Paris, that 
the cession of Louisiana to France completely re- 
versed all the political relations of the United States, 
and "would form a new epoch in our political 
course." "There is on the globe," he said, "one 
single spot the possessor of which is our natural and 
habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which 
the produce of three-eighths of our territory must 
pass to market. France, placing herself in that 
door assumes to us the attitude of defiance. Spain 
might have retained it quietly for years. Her pacific 
dispositions, her feeble state, would induce her to 
increase our facilities there so that her possession of 
the place would be hardly felt by us, and it would 
not perhaps be very long before some circumstance 
might arise which might make the cession of it to 
us the price of something of more worth to her. 
Not so can it ever be in the hands of France. The 
impetuosity of her temper, the energy and restless- 
ness of her character . . . make it impossible that 
France and the United States can continue long 
friends when they meet in so irritable a position. 
The day France takes possession of New Orleans 
fixes the sentence which is to restrain her forever 



226 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

within her low-water mark. It seals the union of 
two nations which in conjunction can maintain ex- 
clusive possession of the ocean. From that moment 
we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and 
nation." This from Thomas Jefferson, the lifelong 
friend of France and the denouncer of the "execra- 
ble" Jay Treaty with England! 

In October, 1802, the Spanish authorities at New 
Orleans (whether at the instigation or for the em- 
barrassment of Napoleon, who had not yet taken 
possession of Louisiana) closed the mouth of the 
Mississippi to American vessels by suspending the 
right of deposit at New Orleans which had been 
granted by the Pinckney Treaty of 1795. The de- 
cree was received with consternation by "the pres- 
tigious and restless population" of our West, who 
sent their produce down the great river. "The 
Mississippi is everything to them," wrote Madison 
to our minister in Spain; "it is the Hudson, the 
Delaware, the Potomac, and all the navigable rivers 
of the Atlantic States, formed into one." During 
the year 1802 the farmers of Kentucky and the Mis- 
sissippi Territory alone had sent one million six 
hundred thousand dollars' worth of produce through 
that channel. The reports of the Spanish custom- 
house showed transhipments of over a thousand 
hogsheads of tobacco and a hundred thousand bar- 
rels of flour, with great quantities of bacon, pork, 
lead, cordage, and apples. Of the two hundred and 



JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 227 

sixty-five vessels that sailed from the Mississippi 
the same year, one hundred and fifty-eight were 
American, as compared with one hundred and four 
Spanish and only three French. The Americans 
were rapidly gaming a monopoly of the trade of New 
Orleans. Petitions began to pour into Congress 
from the Western settlements for the defense of their 
commerce. They were anxious to hav£ the United 
States troops at Natchez march on New Orleans 
forthwith. 

Never before was Jefferson confronted with so 
difficult and delicate a situation, and never, before 
or after, did he display to better advantage his re- 
sources of patient and tactful diplomacy. He 
calmed Congress by a confident message which con- 
tained no mention of the suspended right of deposit, 
but dwelt on the return of peace in Europe and the 
growing prosperity of our country. He only men- 
tioned the cession of Louisiana to France as a trans- 
action which, if carried into effect, would make a 
change in the aspect of our foreign relations. He 
encouraged the exasperated people of the West to 
trust to the protection of the party which had con- 
sistently supported their interests rather than fly 
to the new and simulated friendship of the Federal- 
ists. He secured the appointment of James Monroe 
as a special envoy to France to co-operate with our 
minister, Robert R. Livingston, and the appropria- 
tion of two million dollars "to enable the Executive 



228 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

to commence with more effect a negotiation with 
the French and Spanish governments relative to 
the purchase from them of the Island of New Or- 
leans and the provinces of East and West Florida." 

In spite of his easy tone to Congress, however, 
Jefferson realized to the full the seriousness of the 
situation. "It is a crisis/' he wrote to his old 
friend, Dupont de Nemours, "the most important 
the United States have met since their independence 
and which is to decide their future character and 
career"; and to Livingston, in France, he wrote: 
"The future destinies of our country hang on the 
event of this negotiation." Livingston's instruc- 
tions in the note of April 18, 1802, had declared that 
the cession of New Orleans and the Floridas to us 
by France "would certainly in a great degree remove 
the causes of jarring and irritation between us," if 
France were determined to keep Louisiana. But 
there is proof that Jefferson would have been con- 
tent for the moment to consider the restoration of 
the right of deposit and the free navigation of the 
river as a basis for further peaceful negotiation. 
Monroe's instructions were left vague enough to 
admit of almost any deal with Napoleon and Tal- 
leyrand. They consisted of hardly more than ex- 
aggerated expressions of confidence in Monroe's 
discretion. 

It was not, however, the faithful labors of Liv- 
ingston or even the far-seeing ambitions of Jefferson 



JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 229 

that were the primary cause of our acquisition of 
that splendid domain which stretches from the Mis- 
sissippi to the Rockies and from Canada to the 
Gulf. Livingston's offers had been coldly received 
by Talleyrand, and he wrote home to Madison just 
as Monroe was starting for Paris: "With respect to 
the negotiations for Louisiana, I think nothing will 
be effected here." Jefferson himself confessed in a 
letter to John Bacon (written curiously enough on 
the very day the treaty of cession was dated in 
Paris, April 30, 1803) that he was "not sanguine in 
obtaining a cession of New Orleans for money, " but 
was "confident in the policy of putting off the day 
of contention for it" till we should be "stronger in 
ourselves and stronger in allies"; especially till we 
should have "planted such a population on the Mis- 
sissippi" as would be able to defend their rights. 
He did not expect Napoleon to yield, but his hope 
was to "palliate and endure" until war between 
France and England, with our threat to join the lat- 
ter, gave him the chance to bring to bear on the 
First Consul the only kind of argument which he 
heeded. 

But Napoleon did not wait. He never let the 
initiative in an inevitable act come from another. 
The ill-kept peace of Amiens was wearing thin. 
England refused to abandon Malta in the Mediter- 
ranean, and Napoleon continued his aggressions on 
the Republics along the French borders. Each 



230 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

made the other's acts a cause of war, and both began 
preparations for war. On the very day after Liv- 
ingston wrote home his pessimistic prospects for the 
purchase of any of Louisiana, Napoleon practically 
declared war on England by publicly insulting Lord 
Whitworth at an audience of ambassadors at the 
Tuileries: " You are determined to make war against 
us. You drive me to it. I shall be the last to 
sheathe the sword." Devoted as Napoleon was to 
his colonial scheme, not even his colossal brain 
could manage the affairs of both hemispheres. He 
had to choose between Europe and America, be- 
tween the Continent and the colonies — and he chose 
as every French ruler had chosen since the days of 
Richelieu. Santo Domingo had cost him twenty- 
four thousand men. Spain, secretly encouraged by 
England, had persistently refused to include the 
gulf shores of the Floridas in the cession of San 
Ildefonso. Pichon, the French agent at Washing- 
ton, was writing home alarming reports of the " re- 
doubled civilities" of President Jefferson for the 
British charge. England's renewal of the war 
meant a rebuilding of the European coalition. With 
characteristic abruptness, Napoleon ordered his 
finance minister, Barbe-Marbois, to offer the whole 
province of Louisiana to Livingston for fifty mil- 
lion francs (April 11, 1803). Talleyrand, to whom 
Napoleon had also disclosed his plan, had already 
surprised Livingston by asking him how much the 



JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 231 

United States would give for the whole of Lou- 
isiana. 

Livingston and Monroe (who arrived in Paris the 
day after Talleyrand's proposal) had authority to 
negotiate for New Orleans and the Floridas only, 
and had but two million dollars, or one-fifth the 
price Napoleon asked, to spend. Marbois at first 
put the price of Louisiana at one hundred million 
francs, instead of the fifty million which Napoleon 
had suggested; but finally came down to sixty mil- 
lion clear, with the proviso that the American Gov- 
ernment would assume liability for the claims of 
its citizens for damages done their shipping. These 
claims amounted to some twenty million francs. 
The responsibility put on the envoys was great. 
Fifteen million dollars was a sum considerably in 
excess of the total annual revenue of the United 
States, and the French title to Louisiana was not 
unimpeachable. 1 Yet Livingston and Monroe did 
not hesitate to accept the bargain. On May 2, 
1803, they signed the treaty transferring the prov- 
ince to the United States. Well might Livingston 

1 (1) Napoleon had not taken possession of Louisiana when he 
sold it to us. (2) He had never fulfilled his part of the bargain with 
Spain, which was an Italian throne for the King's nephew. (3) He 
had promised Spain never to transfer Louisiana to a foreign Power. 
(4) He was forbidden by the French Constitution to alienate any 
of the territory of the Republic. "In taking Louisiana," says 
Professor Edward Channing, "we were the accomplices of the 
greatest highwayman of modern history, and the goods which we 
received were those which he compelled his unwilling victims to 
disgorge." 



232 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

exclaim as he rose and shook hands with Monroe 
and Marbois: "We have lived long, but this is the 
noblest work of our whole lives. . . . From this 
day the United States take their place among the 
powers of the first rank. The instruments which 
we have just signed . . . prepare ages of happiness 
for innumerable generations of human creatures. " 
The price paid for that princely domain out of which 
fourteen States of the Union have been carved was 
fifteen million dollars. A little over a century later 
the value of the farm property alone in those States 
was sixteen billion dollars, or more than a thousand 
times the price of the purchase. 

It was a very embarrassed rejoicing with which 
Jefferson received the report of the purchase of the 
whole of Louisiana. This advocate of strict econ- 
omy had spent on his own executive authority an 
amount equal to almost three-fourths of the debt 
which Hamilton had assumed for the States, with 
the sanction of Congress. This champion of the 
letter of the Constitution had exercised the power 
of acquiring foreign territory and promising foreign- 
ers admission to the citizenship of the United States 
for which no clause could be found among the "enu- 
merated powers." This opponent of the extension 
of the "general Government" had stretched its 
power far beyond any point the Federalists had 
reached, and laid the foundation, in the creation of 
an immense national territory in the West, for that 



JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 233 

definitive triumph of the nation over the States 
which his "country men" of the second generation 
fought so desperately to avert. 

Jefferson was quick to recognize the irregularity 
of his act and cry, "PeccaviV He had no apology 
to make for the nature of the bargain, and looked to 
"this duplication of area for extending a govern- 
ment so free and economical as ours" as a great 
achievement, which he was sure the nation would 
not disavow. But he confessed that "the Execu- 
tive, in seizing this fugitive occasion which so much 
advances the good of their country, have done an 
act beyond the Constitution." He compared his 
deed to that of a guardian who invests his ward's 
money in a valuable piece of property and trusts 
that the benefits to accrue will redeem the unau- 
thorized risk. He expected Congress "in casting 
behind them metaphysical subtleties and risking 
themselves like faithful servants," to ratify the act 
and pay for Louisiana, and then "throw them- 
selves on the country for doing for them unau- 
thorized what we know they would have done for 
themselves had they been in a situation to do it." 
"Paternalism" in government, which Jefferson had 
always abhorred, could hardly be more boldly 
stated ! 

Jefferson drew up an amendment to the Constitu- 
tion to regularize the purchase of Louisiana, ex post 
facto. But when letters came from Livingston at 



234 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Paris warning him that there must be no delay in 
the ratification of the treaty and the appropriation 
of the funds, lest Napoleon should change his mind, 
Jefferson changed his tone. He wrote to some friends 
to whom he had expressed his desire for a constitu- 
tional amendment that the less said about the "con- 
stitutional difficulties " respecting Louisiana the bet- 
ter, and that whatever was " necessary for surmount- 
ing them must be done sub silentio." Accordingly, 
when Congress met by special call in October nothing 
was said of the irregularity of the purchase. The 
Senate promptly ratified the treaty by a vote of 
twenty-four to seven, and the House two days later 
voted by ninety to twenty-five the necessary funds, 
by the authorization of eleven million two hun- 
dred and fifty thousand dollars of six-per-cent stock. 
The little group of Federalists made a desperate re- 
sistance. They attacked the treaty as unconstitu- 
tional on the ground that Congress alone could 
"regulate trade" and "admit new States to this 
Union." They asked whether the payment of so 
large a sum of the public money to a belligerent 
nation were not virtually a breach of neutrality. 
They doubted the validity of Napoleon's title to 
Louisiana, and declared that we had simply bought 
of France at an exorbitant price "the authority to 
make war on Spain." But their opposition was 
vain. They could muster only a handful of votes. 
The Louisiana Treaty was as popular as the Jay 



JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 235 

Treaty had been unpopular. Public opinion car- 
ried the administration to a splendid victory, and 
"the theory of strict construction was abandoned 
in the house of its friends. " 

If the Constitution was strained by the treaty 
acquiring the province of Louisiana, the Declaration 
of Independence was outraged in the provisions 
made for its government. Thomas Jefferson, the 
author of the document which declares that gov- 
ernments "derive their just powers from the con- 
sent of the governed," was, by an act of March, 
1804, given an authority over the Territory of Or- 
leans which resembled that of an imperial Roman 
governor rather than a constitutional Republican 
magistrate. He simply replaced King Charles of 
Spain as ruler of the province. He was to appoint 
the governor of the Territory, the council to make 
its laws, the superior judges in its courts — in short, 
the whole governmental machinery, executive, legis- 
lative, judicial. The thirty thousand inhabitants 
of Louisiana, who by the third article of the treaty 
had been promised that they should be "incorpo- 
rated into the Union of the United States and 
admitted as soon as possible . . . into all the 
rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the 
United States," were relegated to a state of colonial 
dependence as absolute as that of our Filipinos in 
1901. They protested in a memorial drawn up by 
Edward Livingston, the younger brother of the 



236 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

minister who had negotiated the purchase, begging 
to know whether political principles which were 
valid on the Atlantic coast lost their force when 
transferred to the banks of the Mississippi, and 
citing the Jeffersonian doctrines of 1775 as a rebuke 
to the Jeffersonian policies of 1804. "Taxation 
without representation, an obligation to obey laws 
without any voice in their foundation, the undue 
influence of the executive upon legislative proceed- 
ings, and a dependent judiciary, formed, we believe, 
very prominent articles in the list of grievances com- 
plained of by the United States at the commence- 
ment of their glorious contest for freedom. Were 
the patriots who composed your councils mistaken 
in their political principles?" The act of 1804 was 
somewhat modified in response to this strong and 
able remonstrance; but still the President was left 
with unprecedented powers over the new domain. 

Louisiana was handed over to the French by the 
Spanish governor on November 30, 1803, and twenty 
days later was transferred from France to the United 
States. Just what its boundaries were was uncer- 
tain then and has continued to be a subject of lively 
controversy among historians ever since. Did it in- 
clude Texas on the west, or any part of the Flor- 
idas on the east ? A map in the French foreign of- 
fice (drawn by Marbois ?) includes both these regions 
in the Louisiana which France secured from Spain in 
the treaty of 1800, and General Victor's instructions 



JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 237 

to take possession of the province distinctly state 
the Rio Bravo (Rio Grande) as the western bound- 
ary. Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, who were 
all intimately concerned in the purchase negotia- 
tions, believed that Texas was included. But we had 
no trans-Mississippi settlements as yet, and the claim 
on Texas was abandoned in the Spanish treaty of 
1819, only to be revived again a quarter of a cen- 
tury later, in Polk's campaign cry for the "re-annex- 
ation of Texas/ 1 With the Floridas the case was 
different* Large rivers from our Territory of Mis- 
sissippi emptied along the Florida Gulf coast, and 
the control of this coast was necessary both for the 
outlet of our commerce and for the protection of our 
territory against Indian raids. 

Into the complications of the Florida case we can- 
not enter here. Suffice it to say that neither Napo- 
leon nor Monroe believed that Florida was included 
in the Louisiana Purchase. The former instructed 
his agent, Berthier, in August, 1800, to get Spain 
"to join to this cession (Louisiana) that of the two 
Floridas, Eastern and Western," and as late as the 
autumn of 1802 was still vainly urging King Charles 
to part with the Floridas. Monroe was on the point 
of setting out for Madrid, immediately after the 
conclusion of the treaty at Paris, to endeavor to 
buy the Floridas from Spain "for another million 
or two/' when he was deterred by the French min- 
isters, who had good reason for not advertising in 



238 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Madrid their sale of Louisiana to the United States. 
These facts would seem to be proof enough that we 
did not purchase the Floridas in 1803. Yet Jeffer- 
son studied up the old boundaries of French, Span- 
ish, and English claims in Florida during his sum- 
mer rest at Monticello, and came to the (highly de- 
sirable) conclusion that we had purchased West 
Florida up to the Perdido River — the division be- 
tween French and Spanish spheres of influence on 
the Gulf shore at the close of the seventeenth cen- 
tury. "I am satisfied our right to the Perdido is 
substantial/ ' he wrote to Secretary Madison on 
August 25, "and can be opposed by a quibble . . . 
only." 

Encouraged by the administration in this further 
adventure in expansion, Congress in February, 1804, 
authorized the President to erect the "shores, 
waters, and inlets of the bay and river of Mobile" 
into a customs district; and on May 20 Jefferson, in 
spite of spirited protest from the Spanish minister 
at Washington, carried out the act by proclama- 
tion. The rest of the story of Florida is an illustra- 
tion of La Fontaine's fable of the wolf and the lamb. 
Spain sank into a state of vassalage to France. The 
mighty Napoleon deposed her sovereign and set his 
own brother on the throne of Madrid. Her colonies 
in America revolted one by one and established their 
independence. Step by step we absorbed the val- 
uable Gulf shore of Florida under Jefferson's sue- 



JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 239 

cessors, Madison and Monroe. In 1810 Madison 
proclaimed the annexation of West Florida; in 1812 
that part of it west of the Pearl River was added to 
the newly created State of Louisiana; in 1813 the 
country was occupied as far as the Perdido; in 1818 
General Jackson swept across East Florida to chas- 
tise the Seminole Indians; and finally, in 1819, a 
treaty was negotiated by which Spain withdrew 
from the Floridas altogether. Thomas Jefferson, in 
that piece of historical research at Monticello in the 
summer of 1803, was preparing the ground for Jack- 
son's conquest. It was Jefferson's claim that Madi- 
son and Monroe extended and consummated. 

Nor was Jefferson's vision of expansion bounded 
by the Rockies and the Gulf. We have already 
noticed his interest in the exploration of the Far 
West which antedated even the treaty of our inde- 
pendence. When Jefferson became President he 
took advantage of his position to push the matter. 
He sent a message to Congress on January 18, 1803 
(just a week after the appointment of Monroe as 
special envoy to Paris), asking for an appropriation 
of twenty-five hundred dollars to send "an intelli- 
gent officer with 10 or 12 chosen men fit for the 
enterprise," to explore "even to the Western Ocean," 
to get acquainted with the various Indian tribes, 
secure admission among them for our traders, and 
bring back geographical, zoological, and botanical 
knowledge of the land. With a quite naive disre- 



240 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

gard of the ethics of sending an armed force through 
the territory of a friendly power, he says that the 
nation [Spain] claiming the region would be inclined 
to regard the expedition as "a literary pursuit/ ' and 
would not be jealous — "even if the expiring state of 
its interests there did not render it a matter of in- 
difference." The " intelligent officer" whom Jef- 
ferson had in mind to lead the expedition was his 
private secretary, Meriwether Lewis, whom he had 
tried to start on a similar expedition with the 
French explorer, Michaux, eleven years before. 
With Lewis he joined William Clark, a younger 
brother of George Rogers Clark, the hero of Vin- 
cennes. After a year of serious training, the expe- 
dition consisting of forty-five persons left camp on 
the Du Bois River, a little above St. Louis, for the 
long journey to the "Western Ocean." They went 
up the Missouri in three boats, rowing and poling 
through the muddy stream, while their hunting 
horse followed along the bank. 

No story in our history is more fascinating than 
the original records of the Lewis and Clark expedi- 
tion, gathered with great diligence and edited in 
most attractive form by the late Professor R. G. 
Thwaites, unless it be Francis Parkman's account 
of his repetition of the journey in "The Oregon 
Trail." The instructions given to Lewis by Jeffer- 
son covered every possible topic of inquiry concern- 
ing the lands and tribes through which the explor- 



JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 241 

ers should pass; and the fidelity with which the 
chief and the members of the party kept their notes 
enables us to follow them day by day, almost hour 
by hour, up the Missouri to its source, across the 
"great divide" to the headwaters of the Columbia 
system, and down to what Clark in his homely, 
direct, ungrammatical style calls "the great Pacific 
Otean which we have been so long anxious to See 
and the roreing noise made by waves braking on 
the rocky Shores (as I suppose) may be heard dis- 
tictly." The party spent its second winter (1805-6) 
on the Pacific coast at the mouth of the Columbia, 
and, starting on the return trip in March, were back 
in St. Louis before the end of September, 1806. The 
Lewis and Clark Expedition was the first recorded 
passage of white men across the northern part of 
what is now the United States. It forms an im- 
portant chapter in the history of our expansion, for 
not only did it lay a foundation for the scientific 
acquaintance with our newly acquired territory of 
Louisiana, but it proved the best of our claims to 
the great Oregon region beyond. So the other half 
of the slogan of Polk's campaign in 1844, the "re- 
occupation of Oregon" also goes back to the expan- 
sionist activities of Thomas Jefferson. 1 

1 There is no evidence that Jefferson gave the directions to Gen- 
eral Wilkinson for sending Zebulon Pike to find the headwaters of the 
Mississippi in 1805 or to explore the region south of the Arkansas 
and the Missouri in 1806, though, as Channing remarks of the later 
mission, "it seems unlikely that Wilkinson would have sent a de- 



242 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

The presidential election of 1804 found Jefferson 
at the full tide of his success and popularity. His 
foreign policy had been approved by large majorities 
in both Houses of Congress. The reports of the ex- 
ploits of our gallant sailors in the Mediterranean 
filled American hearts with pride. Our revenues 
were so swelled by duties on our imports that we 
were able to pay the current expenses of the gov- 
ernment, civil and military, the interest on the 
Louisiana stock, three million, six hundred thou- 
sand dollars on the principal of the debt, and still 
have a balance in the treasury, September 30, 1804, 
of nearly five million dollars, without resorting to 
increased taxation. Harmony reigned in Congress 
and the cabinet. 

In the country at large Republicanism had been 
growing steadily. With the sole exception of 
Matthew Lyon, of Vermont, the electors of the 
New England States had cast their votes solidly 
against Jefferson in the great contest of 1801. Four 
years later Connecticut alone remained faithful to 
the waning Federalist cause. Factious opposition 
to the Louisiana Purchase, jingo patriotism to stir 
up war in the Western settlements, sarcastic toasts 
at banquets to the "limitation of Virginia's domi- 
nation by the Constitution — or by the Delaware," 



tachment of his small army into a region which was in dispute be- 
tween the United States and Spain without the authorization of 
those who were responsible." 



JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 243 

desperate plans to join New York, New Jersey, and 
Delaware with New England in a secessionist move- 
ment, through appeals to the ambition of the dis- 
contented Burr, all resulted in nothing except the 
defeat of Burr for the governorship of New York 
and his murderous revenge on Alexander Hamilton 
on the duelling-ground at Weehawken Heights. 

Jefferson declared that it was his "decided pur- 
pose," when he entered the presidency, to retire at 
the end of one term to a life of tranquillity. But 
early in 1804 he wrote to Governor McKean, of 
Pennsylvania: "The abominable slanders of my 
political enemies have obliged me to call for [a] 
verdict from my country in the only way it can be 
obtained." He therefore allowed himself to be 
nominated by a Congressional caucus, with George 
Clinton, of New York, for his running mate. The 
Federalists, without the formality of a nomination, 
agreed to vote for C. C. Pinckney, of South Caro- 
lina, and Rufus King, of New York. The Twelfth 
Amendment was ratified and proclaimed before the 
election, providing for the specific designation of 
President and Vice-President on the ballots, and 
thus obviating either of the electoral anomalies of 
1797 and 1801. Seventeen States voted, Ohio hav- 
ing been admitted into the Union in 1802. The re- 
sult of the contest was never in doubt, but the com- 
pleteness of Jefferson's victory was a surprise. His 
Federalist opponent carried only the two States of 



244 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Connecticut and Delaware, which, with a little help 
from Maryland, gave them fourteen votes in the 
electoral college to one hundred and sixty-two for 
Jefferson and Clinton. No other President, with 
the exception of Washington, has ever received so 
complete an indorsement of his administration or 
so universal an expression of the confidence of the 
American people. 

Jefferson believed that he had "brought over" 
the great body of Federalists to Republicanism; but 
he had in reality gone far more than half-way to 
meet them. He had more than redeemed the 
pledge of his inaugural address to "preserve the 
general Government in its whole constitutional 
vigor." He had endowed it with extra-constitu- 
tional vigor. The Jefferson of the Kentucky Reso- 
lutions seemed a figure of the dim past. The "Vir- 
ginia school" had protested all through the closing 
years of the eighteenth century against the assump- 
tion of undelegated powers by the central govern- 
ment, but four years of power had wrought such a 
change that the Federalists were now asking within 
what limits the "Virginia domination" could be 
restrained. A President who took it upon himself 
to double the area of the United States by purchase, 
to incorporate a foreign population into our body 
politic and accept a dictatorship over them, to de- 
cide from his own private researches the limits of 
territory in dispute between this country and Spain, 



JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 245 

to send a force of soldiers and explorers through the 
region belonging to a friendly power, to threaten 
to join our nation in marriage "to the British fleet 
and nation" without asking the consent of either, 
to advise Congress to "cast metaphysical subtleties 
behind them" and take the risk of supporting an 
executive who had confessedly "done an act beyond 
the Constitution" — such a President was hardly 
less a Federalist than Washington or Adams. 



CHAPTER IX 
THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 

Peace is our passion. (Jefferson to Sir John Sinclair, June 30, 1803.) 

It would have been well for his peace of mind if 
Jefferson had swallowed the "abominable slanders" 
of his enemies and returned to his beloved Monti- 
cello at the end of his first administration, for his 
second term was a "sea of troubles." The triumph 
of 1804 he took to be the harbinger of a long period 
of harmony and prosperity, when Republicanism 
should have put down all things under its feet. 
Writing to General Heath in December to rejoice 
with him over the "conquest" of New England, he 
said: "All will now come to rights. . . . The new 
century opened itself by committing us on a boister- 
ous ocean, but all is now subsiding; peace is smooth- 
ing our path at home and abroad-; and if we are 
not wanting in the practice of justice and modera- 
tion our tranquillity and prosperity may be pre- 
served until increasing numbers shall leave us noth- 
ing to fear from abroad. With England we are in a 
cordial friendship; with France in the most perfect 
understanding; with Spain we shall be always bick- 
ering, but never at war till we seek it. Other na- 

246 






THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 247 

tions view our course with respect and friendly 
anxiety." It would have been impossible for a 
deceptive optimism to pack more errors of fact and 
judgment into a single paragraph. The " bicker- 
ings " with Spain were the only true prophecy — a 
prophecy which needed the touch of no very live 
coal from the political altars. Jefferson had spoken 
of the presidency when he was elected to the second 
place in 1797, in terms perhaps of self-solacing de- 
preciation, as a "splendid misery." He was now to 
have full experience of the misery of the office whose 
splendor he had always spurned. 

First of all came schism within the Republican 
ranks. We have already touched on the bitter 
strife of the Clinton and Livingston factions in New 
York, with Aaron Burr, the "arch opportunist in 
conspiracy," first coquetting with the Federalists in 
plans of disunion, then slaying their leader in a 
duel. Faction raised its ugly head in Pennsylvania, 
too, the charter State of Republicanism north of 
the Potomac. Massachusetts, over whose "con- 
version" Jefferson exulted in December, 1804, 
elected a Federalist governor and legislature the 
following April. "I see with infinite pain the 
bloody schism which has lately taken place among 
our friends in Pennsylvania and New York," wrote 
Jefferson only two months after his second inaugu- 
ration, "and which will probably take place in the 
other States." This time his prophecy was correct. 



248 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

His own State of Virginia was ready for partial re- 
volt, and the leader of the disaffection was Jeffer- 
son's distant kinsman, John Randolph, of Roanoke. 1 
"Eccentric," " vituperative, " "sarcastic," "un- 
controllable," "venomous" are the adjectives which 
precede Randolph's name with Homeric constancy, 
and a Homeric phrase, too, fitly describes his mental 
superiority of his fellow members of Congress. In a 
House of mediocrities he alone, like Tiresias in the 
underworld in the Odyssey "was wise, and the others 
flitted as shadows." He might have broken the ad- 
ministration's control of Congress, had not his ex- 
cess of zeal and temper delivered him into the hands 
of the patient, wary President. As it was, he led a 
schism, and gave the Federalists the immense satis- 
faction of seeing disunion among the "Virginia 
lordlings." Randolph prided himself on being a 
Simon-pure Republican of the "old school," with 
no apologies to make for the Virginia and Kentucky 
Resolutions, whose authors had gone far on the 
path of reconciliation with Federalist doctrines. 
Why should Thomas Jefferson seek the Lincolns 
and Dearborns and Crowninshields of Massachu- 
setts for his advisers, drawing only a single member 
of his cabinet from the States south of the Potomac, 
and that one a man still "tainted" with the old 

1 Randolph with his inimitable genius for barbed epigram, likened 
the second administration of Jefferson to the seven lean kine of 
Pharaoh's dream who rose up and devoured the seven fat kine of 
the first administration. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 249 

heresy of Federalism ? Where were the representa- 
tives of the Southern planters' interests? 

Randolph's break with the administration came 
in the winter session of 1805-6, but he was already 
estranged at the opening of the new presidential 
term. Both the estrangement and the rupture were 
provoked by measures which Jefferson insisted on 
with a tenaciousness which contrasted strangely 
with his general pliability in matters of practical 
government. We have already seen with what 
jealousy Jefferson regarded the life-tenure and the 
practical immunity from popular control of the 
federal judiciary. While in many of the colonies 
the judges had been responsible to the legislatures, 
while even in England itself they were removable 
on address by the Houses of Parliament, our repub- 
lican Constitution had out-monarchied monarchical 
Britain by placing the judges beyond popular, legis- 
lative, or executive control except by the cumbrous 
process of impeachment "for high crimes and mis- 
demeanors," initiated by the House and sustained 
by a two-thirds vote of the Senate. The Federalists, 
defeated at the polls in the election of 1800, had 
"taken refuge in the judiciary," as Jefferson com- 
plained. Commissions had been withheld, to be 
sure, from the new batch of superfluous judges cre- 
ated by John Adams in the "midnight hours" of 
his term, and the act creating the new positions 
had been repealed. But still there remained the 



250 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

supreme court, inviolate because created by the 
Constitution. And at its head was a man ap- 
pointed by Adams after the victory of the Jefferson- 
Burr ticket, John Marshall, who began his long 
career of thirty-four years of fortification of the 
power of the central government by ruling in the 
case of Marbury vs. Madison that the supreme 
court could declare laws of Congress null and void 
if they conflicted with the court's interpretation of 
the Constitution. 

Jefferson ordered the attack on this stronghold 
of Federalism, the national judiciary. The first vic- 
tim was John Pickering, a district judge of New 
Hampshire, who was impeached early in 1804 on 
the charge of habitual drunkenness, profanity, and 
gross language of abuse on the bench, and, in spite 
of a touching petition from his son, alleging insanity 
as the cause of the old judge's deplorable behavior, 
was voted guilty by the Senate and removed. After 
this " experiment in corpore vili" the administration 
sought higher game. Samuel Chase, of Maryland, 
a veteran of the Revolution and a signer of the Dec- 
laration of Independence, had been appointed to 
the supreme court by Washington in 1796. He had 
been particularly fierce against the Republicans in 
his conduct of trials under the Alien and Sedition 
Acts, overstepping the line of impartial instruction 
in the points of the law by converting his charges to 
the jury into political harangues. In addressing a 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 251 

grand jury in Baltimore on May 2, 1803, he had 
attacked the Jeffersonian doctrine of popular gov- 
ernment as "fatal to all security for property and 
personal liberty" and a harbinger of "mobocracy, 
the worst of all possible governments." Jefferson 
was stirred to revenge. " Ought this seditious" (note 
the adjective from the author of the Kentucky 
Resolutions !) "and official attack on the principles of 
our Constitution . . . to go unpunished ?" he wrote 
to Nicholson; adding with characteristic caution: 
"for myself, it is better that I should not interfere." 
The "hint" was taken. The same day that Judge 
Pickering's sentence was pronounced the House 
voted to impeach Samuel Chase of high crimes and 
misdemeanors. 

John Randolph undertook the management of 
the case and expected to make it the grand event of 
the administration. The Senate chamber was hung 
with crimson, blue, and green. The temporary gal- 
leries were crowded with fashionable spectators. 
The gala scene recalled the impeachment of Warren 
Hastings in Westminster Hall twenty years before. 
But John Randolph was not Edmund Burke. His 
sarcastic jibes and vitriolic ravings, so effective in 
the running fire of debate in the House, were out of 
place in the solemn court. On some of the charges 
Chase was unanimously acquitted, and in none could 
a vote of more than nineteen senators (four less than 
the necessary two-thirds) be marshalled against him. 



252 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

On the 1st day of March, 1805, three days before 
Jefferson's second inauguration, Aaron Burr rose 
from his chair as presiding officer of the Senate, and 
with ill-concealed congratulation in his voice and 
gesture declared the defendant "not guilty." As 
twenty-four of the thirty-four members of the Sen- 
ate were Republicans, it was evident that Judge 
Chase had not been acquitted by the strength of 
the "Federalist faction"; and it was also evident to 
John Randolph that the cause of his party's infidelity 
and his own humiliation was the baleful influence of 
the Northern and Middle States on the administra- 
tion. Jefferson had set on foot the impeachment 
proceedings, but had not been able to hold his fol- 
lowers in the Senate together for a verdict of con- 
demnation. The President was shielded behind his 
discreet silence, while the obloquy of a public defeat 
rested on John Randolph of Roanoke. He was 
through with being the catspaw to pull Thomas 
Jefferson's chestnuts from the fire. 

Randolph's opportunity for revenge was not long 
delayed. Since his excursion into the historical 
study of the boundaries of Louisiana during his 
summer rest at Monticello, Jefferson had been ob- 
sessed with the idea that Florida was rightfully 
ours. He came to feel that the whole glory of the 
Louisiana Purchase for his administration depended 
on the possession of Florida. But Spain interposed 
her stubborn refusal to give up an inch of territory 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 253 

east of the Iberville and the Lakes, while Talleyrand, 
after having encouraged the American envoys to 
push the claim, blandly announced that France had 
not really received Florida from Spain in 1800, and 
hence could not have sold it to the United States in 

1803. Jefferson, however, thought he knew better 
what Napoleon had bought and sold than Napoleon 
knew himself, and bent all the powers of his diplo- 
macy to persuade the Corsican, who assumed the 
imperial crown of Charlemagne on December 2, 

1804, to force Spain to relinquish Florida. It was 
the most unwise policy of Jefferson's administra- 
tion. It exposed him to the triple charge of im- 
patience, infatuation, and venality: impatience, 
because Jefferson himself had declared that the 
Floridas would come to us sooner or later through 
the development of our Mississippi Territory; infat- 
uation because he thought he could exert pressure 
on the man who was setting out on the conquest 
of Europe 1 ; and venality, because he was willing to 
pay again secretly through Napoleon as the "honest 

1 Little did Jefferson realize the course which the renewed war be- 
tween England and Napoleon would take in Europe. He looked on 
it as an embarrassment to Napoleon, which would dispose him to 
lend a favorable ear to representations from Washington! "The 
present crisis," he said in a message to Congress, December 6, 1805, 
"is favorable for pressing such a settlement [the claim to Florida] 
and not a moment should be lost in availing ourselves of it." Four 
days before this message was read Napoleon had shattered the im- 
perial armies of Austria and Russia at Austerlitz, and established 
the mastery of the Continent of Europe which was to be finally 
broken only on the field of Waterloo a decade later. 



254 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

broker" for what he publicly insisted we had al- 
ready bought. 

In fact, Jefferson was in a most uncomfortable 
dilemma. To waive the claim to Florida would 
tarnish, as he believed, the most brilliant and popu- 
lar act of his administration. To insist on the claim 
to Florida would mean war with Spain (unless Na- 
poleon should help us), which Jefferson was more 
anxious to avoid than the Court of Madrid. "Why 
should we give up Florida without a struggle," said 
the Spaniards, "when all you could get as a result 
of a victory over our arms would be just Florida?" 
In this dilemma Jefferson resorted to tactics which 
he had practised three years before in the purchase 
of Louisiana. Just as he then threatened that we 
would "marry ourselves to the British fleet and 
nation" the moment the French established them- 
selves at the mouth of the Mississippi, and at the 
same time instructed our minister to negotiate for 
the purchase of New Orleans, so now he threatened 
war with Spain in public, hoping to frighten her to 
consent to a bargain in private. The regular annual 
message which was sent in to Congress on Decem- 
ber 3, 1805, was quite belligerent in tone, as it re- 
counted the manifold offenses of Spain: her refusal 
to recognize the just limits of Louisiana, her depre- 
dations on our commerce at Mobile, the marauding 
expeditions of her subjects into our Mississippi Ter- 
ritory. A further communication on the subject 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 255 

was promised shortly. Three days later a "confi- 
dential" message came from the President and was 
read behind closed doors to a House tense with the 
expectation of the recommendation of war. But 
the message proved to be as mild as any pacifist 
could wish. Instead of calling for the use of the 
army and navy against perfidious Spain, it sug- 
gested that the time was "favorable for pressing a 
settlement," and pledged the President to pursue 
with zeal the course which Congress (to whom it 
"belonged exclusively to yield or deny" [resist]) 
should determine. This cryptic message was re- 
ferred to a committee of which John Randolph was 
chairman. When Randolph demanded in a per- 
sonal interview at the White House what the Presi- 
dent meant in plain terms, he was told that two 
million dollars were wanted to secure the cession of 
the Floridas. 

Randolph had not scrupled to lend his aid to a 
similar negotiation for the purchase of Louisiana, 
but that was in the early days when he was friendly 
to the administration. Now Randolph, to the dis- 
may of the President's friends, rose in his seat and 
, opposed the appropriation of the two million dollars 
with all the sarcastic vehemence of his nature. 
What was the meaning of this double dealing of the 
President, he asked : a message for the public breath- 
ing dire defiance and a secret message for Congress 
hinting that they might choose peace and the pay- 



256 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ment of tribute? Did the President wish to pose 
before England and Spain as a warrior bold, and 
shift to Congress the unpopular role of seeming to 
restrain him within the peaceful bounds which he 
never in his heart meant to exceed? Were we to 
"prostrate our national character to excite one na- 
tion [France] by money to bully another nation 
[Spain] out of its property?" He for one would 
have no part in this nefarious scheme to " deliver 
the public purse to the first cutthroat that de- 
manded it." 

Surprised and chagrined by this proclamation of 
rebellion, Jefferson saw himself obliged to choose 
between the harmony of his party and the mainte- 
nance of his policy. He chose the latter, and John 
Randolph led off his group of " Quids" in schism. 
They were not many. Jefferson affected a certain 
indifference to their defection, speaking of them a 
year later in a letter to W. C. Nicholas as a "little 
band of schismatists who will be 3 or 4 (all tongue)." 
But in spite of this exaggerated depreciation Jeffer- 
son felt it keenly when twelve of the twenty-two 
Virginia members of the House voted against the 
two-million-dollar bill. He carried the measure, by 
V the rather narrow margin of seventy-six to fifty-four, 
and with it a bill to prohibit American trade with 
the French island of Santo Domingo, which Talley- 
rand had declared "must stop." So far was he will- 
ing to go on the road of deference to Napoleon! 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 257 

Still the price he paid for having his way was high, 
and the returns that he got were small. He incurred 
the charge of truckling to France, of holding the 
whip-hand over Congress, of alienating some of the 
leading Virginia Republicans, and of causing an 
open rupture in his party, just like John Adams. 
Napoleon took not a single step toward satisfying 
our claims to the " rightful boundaries of Louisiana." 
The Emperor was busy elsewhere. His face was 
turned from Washington toward Jena, Eylau, and 
Friedland. Florida still dangled before Jefferson's 
Tantalus gaze. A dozen years were to pass before 
Spain, exhausted by her struggle with the mighty 
Corsican, and shorn of her colonies in the New 
World, was to yield us title to the shores which Ponce 
de Leon had christened the "land of flowers' ' in the 
days of her strength and glory three centuries past. 
The stormy session of the ninth Congress which 
had opened on the day of Austerlitz (December 2, 
1805) came to a close on April 21, 1806. The 
President had carried through a fruitless programme 
at the cost of divided counsels and waning popular- 
ity. "Mr. Jefferson has worried himself so much 
; with the movements of Congress," wrote the French 
i minister at Washington to Talleyrand on May 10, 
1806, "that he has made himself ill and grown ten 
I years older." But Jefferson's troubles were only 
- beginning. While he was laboring during the sum- 
mer of 1806 to heal the schism in the party, combat- 



258 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ing the charges of inconsistency and intrigue which 
John Randolph was publishing over the signature 
of Decius in the Richmond Enquirer, indignantly 
denying to Duane the rumor that he had "denounced 
the old Republicans by the epithet of Jacobins/ ' and 
exhorting his secretaries, Gallatin, Madison, and 
Dearborn not to let the "malignant . . . efforts of 
their adversaries succeed in sowing tares" between 
them, difficulties and dangers were multiplying at 
home and abroad. Persistent and ugly rumors 
came to Washington of the treasonable movements 
of Aaron Burr in the Western country, and the dep- 
redations of French and English cruisers on our 
commerce were growing intolerable. 

Just what Burr intended to accomplish by his 
plots in the Southwest will never be clear, nor could 
he probably have given a coherent account of them 
himself. For his plans evidently changed with his 
fortunes. It is certain, however, that after the ruin 
of his political career in the East by the slaying of 
Hamilton he entertained grandiose notions of start- 
ing a "new empire" in the West. Now it was a 
scheme to detach all the States west of the Alle- 
ghanies and join them to Louisiana, as he confided 
to the English minister, Merry, whom he asked for 
financial aid to the extent of half a million, and a 
supporting squadron of British ships at the mouth 
of the Mississippi. Now it was a desperate plot to 
kidnap the heads of the government, seize the pub- 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 259 

lie treasure, and sail for New Orleans to proclaim 
the independence of Louisiana. Now it took the 
form of a great empire in Mexico and Central 
America, in which he should be the new Monte- 
zuma. Now it dwindled into the harmless scheme 
of purchasing and colonizing the Bastrop grant on 
the Red River. The whole episode, which fills the 
two years from Burr's retirement from the vice- 
presidency in 1805 to his trial in Richmond in 1807, 
is a tangled drama of intrigue and deception, with 
the two arch scoundrels, Burr and Wilkinson, in the 
title-roles; with Major-General Andrew Jackson 
grazing the edge of treason in his ostentatious recep- 
tion to Burr in Tennessee, and Henry Clay pledging 
his own "honor and innocence" in support of Burr's 
before the grand jury of Kentucky; with the blan- 
dishments of Theodosia Burr Alston, the "empress 
elect," and the poor braggart dupe, Blennerhasset, 
shorn of his money. 

Jefferson had at first rumors, then more definite 
reports from several sources, of "strange and sus- 
picious movements" by Burr in the West, early in 
the year 1806, but he treated them with indifference. 
He was absorbed in his quest for Florida. General 
Eaton, a hero of the Tripolitan war, called on him 
a few weeks after he had carried the two-million-dol- 
lar bill through the House, and told him from good 
evidence that "if Colonel Burr was not disposed of 
we should in eighteen months have an insurrection 



260 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

if not a revolution on the waters of the Mississippi." 
Jefferson replied that he had "too much confidence 
in the . . . attachment of the people of that coun- 
try to the Union to admit of any apprehensions of 
that kind." Mr. Henry Adams says in his detailed 
account of the conspiracy that "a word quietly 
written by Jefferson to one or two persons in the 
Western country would have stopped Burr short in 
his path and would have brought Wilkinson to his 
knees." Yet Jefferson, either on account of what 
Randolph called "the easy credulity of his tem- 
per," or because Wilkinson had some hold on him 
which we cannot explain, or because the most con- 
vincing evidence of Burr's treason was furnished by 
a Federalist district attorney, took no action until 
near the close of November, 1806, and then only 
issued a general proclamation without even men- 
tioning Burr's name. "Sundry persons," it de- 
clared, were conspiring against Spain (!), and all 
officers of the United States were ordered to seize 
and detain such persons. Burr slipped by the forts 
at the mouth of the Ohio and kept ahead of the 
slowly travelling proclamation on his way down the 
Mississippi. It remained for Wilkinson, betraying 
Burr as he had for years betrayed his country by 
the acceptance of Spanish gold, to bring the "con- 
spiracy" to a halt by prohibiting Burr's approach 
to New Orleans. Realizing that the game was up, 
Burr surrendered to Governor Meade, of the Missis- 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 261 

sippi Territory, escaped in the guise of a woodman, 
and was finally apprehended, at the end of Febru- 
ary, 1807, near the Spanish frontier of West Florida, 
and sent to Richmond for trial. 

After his "culpable negligence" in not suppressing 
the conspiracy, Jefferson now showed great zeal in 
prosecuting the victim. But his unfortunate delay 
had made him rather the accomplice of Wilkinson 
than the dignified first magistrate of the land, the 
sworn defender of its Constitution and laws. His 
implacable enemy, John Marshall, presided over the 
circuit court at Richmond, and designated as fore- 
man of the grand jury a newer but no less implaca- 
ble enemy of the administration — John Randolph, 
of Roanoke. A third enemy, Luther Martin, of 
Maryland, whom Jefferson called an "impudent 
Federal bull-dog," was the leading counsel for Burr, 
as he had been for Chase. At the hands of these 
men the trial soon assumed the form of an inquisi- 
tion into the conduct of Thomas Jefferson rather 
than of Aaron Burr. Instructed by Marshall on 
the nature of the "overt act" which constituted 
treason, John Randolph refused to bring in a bill 
of indictment on that score, and Burr was tried for 
a misdemeanor only. The court summoned Jeffer- 
son by subpoena to appear in person with papers re- 
lating to the alleged conspiracy, and when the Presi- 
dent refused to obey the summons on the ground 
that it would be incompatible with the dignity of 



262 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

his position, he was obliged to endure sarcasms from 
Luther Martin, which certainly did not elevate that 
dignity. He was accused of having prejudged Burr 
and "let slip the dogs of war and the hell-hounds of 
persecution" against him. Jefferson did, in fact, 
write more than a dozen letters from Washington 
and Monticello to George Hay, the district attorney 
at Richmond, spurring on the prosecution, threat- 
ening that Marshall's career would be at an end if 
he allowed Burr to escape punishment, and even 
suggesting that Luther Martin be arraigned as a 
particeps criminis. He was driven to these extremi- 
ties partly by the embarrassment of having to lean 
for his star witness on James Wilkinson (a very rot- 
ten if not a broken reed), and partly by the disgrace- 
ful partisanship of the Federalists, who for the sake 
of humiliating Jefferson were willing to caress the 
man who had cost them New York and the election 
of 1800 and had slain their leader in duel. The 
Burr trial was rather a political campaign than a 
judicial process. When the prisoner was acquitted 
the Federalists celebrated with feasting and hilarity. 
Even John Marshall felt a "sober satisfaction" be- 
neath his impassive mien, and John Randolph was 
avenged for another acquittal, two years before, 
when he had borne the odium of defeat hi doing the 
will of Thomas Jefferson. 

While these scenes were being enacted in Rich- 
mond, "scenes," said Jefferson, "never before ex- 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 263 

hibited in any country where all regard to public 
character had not yet been thrown off/' a crisis arose 
with Great Britain, which threw our land into a 
state of excitement and exasperation such as it had 
not experienced since the days of Lexington and 
Bunker Hill. On June 22, 1807, his Majesty's ship, 
Leopard, fired on the American frigate Chesapeake, 
off the Virginia coast, and left her, with twenty-one 
killed or wounded men on her decks, her hull pierced 
by twenty-two solid shot and her rigging lacerated 
by grape, to creep back to her anchorage at Norfolk. 
To understand this outrageous act, whose conse- 
quences embarrassed the remaining months of Jef- 
ferson's already sorely embarrassed administration, 
and led eventually to our second war with England, 
we must turn to a brief review of our foreign rela- 
tions in the years immediately preceding the Chesa- 
peake affair. 

During the ten years from the Jay Treaty to the 
second inauguration of Jefferson, we were on good 
terms with England. Our difficulties with France 
(the quarrel with the Directory, the X Y Z affair, 
the quasi war of 1799-1800) tended to obscure the 
unsatisfactory features of the Jay Treaty, while the 
able diplomacy of our minister, Rufus King, im- 
proved our relations with the Court of St. James. 
Moreover, England's activity in the French Revo- 
lutionary wars diminished toward the close of the 
century and expired finally in the Treaty of Amiens, 



264 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

concluded with the First Consul on March 25, 1802. 
Since our controversies with England and France 
over the rights of neutral trade waxed and waned 
with the severity of the European struggle, the 
early years of Jefferson's presidency were peculiarly 
favorable to our peace and prosperity. The Louisi- 
ana Purchase put us on those terms of good-will 
with France which always result from an important 
transaction highly satisfactory to both parties. A 
few weeks later (July, 1803) Rufus King, across the 
Channel, concluded two conventions with the Ad- 
dington ministry which went far toward removing 
the lingering resentment over the Jay Treaty. Eng- 
lan accepted six hundred thousand pounds in pay- 
ment of the long-standing debts to her creditors 
and agreed to commissions for the determination of 
our northwestern and northeastern boundaries. The 
Barings, with the consent of the British Government, 
advanced the cash on our Louisiana stock. King 
was even confident that he would have persuaded 
the ministry to stop the impressment of American 
sailors if he had not been on the eve of his departure 
for home. "The present administration," wrote 
Jefferson, "is the most favorable that has existed 
or could exist for the interests of the United States." 
Then the storm burst in Europe which was des- 
tined finally to draw us into the maelstrom of war. 
Eleven days after the signatures were set to the 
Louisiana Purchase Treaty, Napoleon made his 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 265 

categorical demand on the British ambassador for 
"Malta or war," and Great Britain took up the chal- 
lenge by a formal declaration of hostilities, May 18, 
1803. This opened the titanic struggle which was 
to convulse Europe from St. Petersburg to Lisbon, 
and was to end only with the exile of the Corsican 
to St. Helena. We have seen how Jefferson at first 
mistakenly supposed that the renewal of war in 
Europe, from which we were so far and fortunately 
aloof, would only serve to advance our interests. 
Napoleon's " embarrassment, " he thought, would 
be the favorable moment to press his darling proj- 
ect of the claim to Florida; while England would 
do nothing to risk losing a trade of forty million 
dollars with the United States. "Our commerce,' ' 
he wrote, "is so valuable to them that they will be 
glad to purchase it when the only price we ask is to 
do us justice. I believe we have in our hands the 
means of peaceable coercion." 

The events of the summer and autumn of 1805 
would have taught a statesman less enamoured than 
Jefferson of the abstract principles of political ethics 
that peaceful coercion of England and France had 
about as much chance of success as peaceful remon- 
strance with an "infuriated highwayman." In 
July Sir William Scott, of the admiralty court, re- 
versing a decision of four years earlier, declared in 
the Essex case that neutral ships could not carry the 
enemy's products from the West Indies to Europe, 



266 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

even if breaking the voyage by call at an American 
port. In August, Napoleon moved his grand army 
from its camp at Boulogne in his wonderful march 
across Europe to the Danube. In October Lord 
Nelson shattered the combined French and Spanish 
fleets at Trafalgar and made England mistress of 
the ocean. In December Napoleon crushed the 
combined armies of Austria and Russia at Austerlitz 
and made himself master of the Continent. From 
this time forth England had one policy, to control 
the ocean-borne trade of the world. Her life de- 
pended on her food supplies from abroad. The 
wealth for her gigantic struggle against Napoleon 
depended on her keeping open the markets for the 
disposal of her manufactures. Britannia must lit- 
erally rule the waves. Neutral trade must obey 
her orders or cease to exist. 

Jefferson recognized the change in England's atti- 
tude; still he labored for peace. He hailed with joy 
the accession of the liberal and friendly Whig states- 
man, Charles James Fox, on the death of Pitt in 
January, 1806. In May he sent William Pinkney, 
of Maryland, to join Monroe in London to negotiate 
a new commercial treaty, instructing him to ask for 
a cessation of impressments, the replacement of our 
West Indian trade on the basis of 1801, and repara- 
tion for depredations on our commerce under the 
Essex ruling. Jefferson could not or would not see 
that a nation whose foreign trade had grown from 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 267 

363,111 tons in 1791 to 669,921 tons in 1800, and 
was well on its way to the million mark, did not 
control the maritime policy of the world. He still 
believed after Trafalgar that we "held England by 
the throat." 

Before Monroe and Pinkney put their names to a 
treaty so careless of American rights that Jefferson 
would not even submit it to the Senate for ratifica- 
tion, a new chapter opened in the European struggle. 
The British ministry, unwilling to see Napoleon's 
growing empire supplied with colonial products 
through the neutral carrying trade after the French 
fleet had been swept from the ocean, began to issue 
orders blockading the coast of the continent (Fox's 
blockade of April 8, 1806). Napoleon, on his part, 
after failing to subdue the British Isles by force, de- 
termined to starve them by prohibiting all trade in 
English merchandise on the continent and ordering 
the seizure of all vessels coming from England or 
the colonies to a port within his control (Berlin De- 
cree of November 21, 1806). The British ministry, 
with quite brutal frankness, made our repudiation 
of the Berlin Decree the condition for any treaty of 
commerce with the United States; while Napoleon, 
with no more good-will but with a cynical flattery, 
" assumed" that the Americans would not submit 
to the "unjust and illegal measures" of Great 
Britain, which "dishonored them and disgraced 
their independence." The French minister at Wash- 



268 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ington, Turreau, unable to appreciate Jefferson's 
policy of "peaceful coercion/ ' in the face of such 
manifest encroachment on our rights and dignity 
by Great Britain, could attribute our passive be- 
havior only to our "sordid avarice, sentiments of 
fear and of servile deference for England with which 
the inhabitants of the American Union are pene- 
trated." 

Such was the deplorable situation of our com- 
merce and diplomacy when the attack of the Leop- 
ard on the Chesapeake aroused our country to a 
state of excitement "unparalleled since the affray 
at Lexington." Jefferson assembled his scattered 
cabinet on July 2, and issued a proclamation order- 
ing all armed vessels of Great Britain out of the 
waters of the United States. He directed gun- 
boats to points on our coast liable to attack, ordered 
the governors of the States to have one hundred 
thousand militia ready for call, summoned our fleet 
from the Mediterranean, and despatched a war-ship 
appropriately named the Revenge to England to 
demand the disavowal of the attack on the Chesa- 
peake, the restoration of the men taken from her 
decks, and the punishment of Admiral Berkeley, 
the commanding officer of the British Atlantic 
squadron. The country stood solidly behind the 
President. "But one feeling pervades the nation," 
wrote Nicholson; "all distinctions of Federalism and 
Democracy are vanished. ... I trust in God the 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 269 

Revenge is going out to bring Monroe and Pinkney 
home." 

That Jefferson's measures were ineffectual was 
due rather to the incalculable situation in Europe 
than to the sentiments of "fear and servile defer- 
ence" with which the French minister — followed 
by some American historians — charged him. On 
the very day of the Chesapeake affair a reaction- 
ary Parliament met at Westminster with a clear 
majority of two hundred Tory members, eager to 
support the most dictatorial coercion of neutrals 
advocated by Spencer Perceval and George Canning, 
and to hound on the chauvinistic editors who were 
denouncing America as "an insignificant and puny 
power," which would not be "suffered to mutilate 
Britain's proud sovereignty of the ocean." Three 
days after the Chesapeake affair, the victor of Fried- 
land met Alexander of Russia on a raft in the Nie- 
men and planned the division of Europe between 
them and the annihilation of Great Britain. It was 
the climax of the struggle between the master of 
the land and the mistress of the seas, between "the 
tiger and the shark." And in the struggle, which 
meant empire for Napoleon and existence for Eng- 
land, the last shreds of neutral rights were swept 
away. British Orders in Council declared every 
port from which the British flag was excluded (that 
is, practically the whole Continent of Europe) under 
strict blockade, and compelled all neutral vessels 



270 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

wishing to enter such ports to call first at a British 
port and pay " transit duties" to the British Gov- 
ernment. Napoleon replied with the Milan Decree 
(December 17, 1807), ordering the seizure of any 
vessel that had touched at a British port, submitted 
to search on the high seas by a British cruiser, or 
paid dues to the British customs officers, on the 
ground that such a vessel had suffered itself to be 
" denationalized" and become English property. 
Great Britain closed the Continent to us except 
through English ports: Napoleon threatened con- 
fiscation of every ship that came through those 
ports. Our commerce was ground between the 
Orders and the Decrees as between the upper and 
the nether millstones. 

Three courses were open to Jefferson. He might 
declare war against England or France, or both; he 
might let things continue as they were, still hoping 
to make the thin voice of diplomacy heard above 
the increasing storm of battle; or he might punish 
both England and Napoleon by cutting off a com- 
merce which he believed absolutely necessary to 
their existence. If England fined our trade thou- 
sands of dollars by the new Orders in Council, we 
would fine her treasury millions by cutting off that 
trade altogether. Jefferson had really no idea of 
going to war. He saw, as well as John Randolph, 
the futility of a struggle against "the leviathan of 
the ocean," with such feeble military and naval re- 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 271 

sources as six years of a peace economy had left to 
the United States. At the same time Jefferson was 
unwilling frankly to accept the logic of his own pol- 
icy. His popularity was dearer to him as his term 
of office drew to an end. He assumed a tone of 
firmness, and even of menace, in his proclamations 
and messages, while he sought by secret expedients 
to "arrange matters" with the British minister and 
envoy. In the midsummer of 1807, when the 
American people were seething with indignation, 
Jefferson breathed out defiance: "If England does 
us ample justice it will be a war saved, but I do 
not expect it." "If we must have a war it is a good 
time, for England has Napoleon on her hands." "I 
say Down with England! and as for what Bonaparte 
is to do to us, let us trust to the chapter of acci- 
dents." When, however, the news reached America 
at the same moment that Napoleon had determined 
to enforce the Berlin Decree against us, and that 
the Tory ministers of George III refused to yield an 
inch in the matter of impressments, Jefferson spoke 
no more of war. He sent his orders to an obedient 
Congress to lay an indefinite embargo on the foreign 
shipping of America, while his secretary of the 
navy, Robert Smith, privately interceded, at his 
request, with Canning's special envoy, George Rose, 
to have "such steps taken as would conciliate the 
President's wish to give his Majesty satisfaction 
. . . and yet to retain what was preeminently valu- 



272 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

able to him." The United States, having lost hope 
of obtaining the Floridas through Napoleon's good 
offices, said Smith, now "sincerely wished to see 
them in the hands of Great Britain. " 

It is impossible to approve Jefferson's conduct in 
all this, though we need not go to the length of 
Henry Adams's harsh judgment that he " trafficked 
the people's dignity and his own self-respect," and 
"begged for mercy from a British minister" in order 
to save his popularity. Until the batch of ill news 
(which no man could foresee) arrived from Europe 
in December, 1807, Jefferson undoubtedly believed 
sincerely in the efficacy of his humane and economic 
project of "peaceful coercion." And it is probable 
that he retired to private life, fifteen months later, 
still convinced that his plan would have worked 
had the cabinet, Congress, and the people stood by 
him as they did in the Louisiana negotiation. He 
was mistaken in his judgment, deceived and disap- 
pointed in his hopes; but he was not a hypocrite. 

The wisdom of Jefferson's behavior is quite an- 
other question than its honesty. A fair judgment 
of this question cannot be based alone on the events 
of the year 1807, but must cover the whole policy of 
the administration. No mortal man, with the pos- 
sible exception of Napoleon Bonaparte, could have 
foreseen, in the quiet year of the Peace of Amiens, 
the events of Austerlitz and Jena, of Friedland and 
Tilsit. When Jefferson entered the presidency we 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 273 

were, for the first time since the declaration of our 
independence, not only on terms of formal peace, 
but also apparently on the way to lasting friendship 
with the European nations. It looked as though 
our days of tribulation were over. Except for the 
trivial war with the Barbary pirates, there was not 
a cloud in the sky. Jefferson entered on his policy 
of disarmament not as a wilful and capricious ex- 
periment, but with the cordial support of the best 
minds of his party, of Madison and Gallatin, of 
Randolph, Macon, and Giles. The success of that 
policy, until the great storm burst in Europe, is re- 
corded in the treasury reports of Albert Gallatin. 
When the storm burst, it is true, neither our wealth 
nor our good intentions nor our fancied isolation 
could save us from being drawn into it. We were 
unprepared for war, and we were obliged to endure 
humiliation. But it still remains for those who 
have castigated and ridiculed Thomas Jefferson as 
the author of our misfortunes to prove that we 
should have been "prepared" to compel justice 
from the victors of Trafalgar and Friedland, even 
if every dollar that Gallatin applied to the reduc- 
tion of our debt had been spent in building frigates. 
Not only would England "have fought us as readily 
in 1807 as in 1812" (as the acrimonious Morse con- 
fesses), but she would have fought us with far 
greater vigor and freshness. She would have fought 
us with the ruthlessness of Gambier at Copenhagen. 



274 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

For she would then have been fighting for her very 
life, and as the war progressed the news of Napo- 
leon's crowning audacities, of Bayonne and Erfurt, 
of Savona and Schonbrunn, would have spurred 
her to far other efforts than did the actual reports, 
a few years later, of the disintegration of the " Grand 
Army" amid the snows of Russia, the hasty evacua- 
tion of German soil by Napoleon after the " Battle 
of the Nations" at Leipzig, and the victorious 
march of Wellesley through the Peninsula. It was 
a blessing for us that our second war with England 
was begun in 1812 and not in 1807. If we could 
not prevent or avoid the storm, it was infinitely bet- 
ter that we suffered only its nearly spent fury. 

It is as easy for the modern critic to harp on Jef- 
ferson's "timidity," "vacillation," and "culpable 
negligence" in this great crisis of world history, as it 
was for John Randolph to sneer at Madison's expo- 
sition of England's depredations on our commerce 
as "a shilling pamphlet matched against 800 ships 
of war." But neither John Randolph nor the mod- 
ern critic would have had us build eight hundred 
or even eighty ships of war to match Great Britain's. 
Jefferson saw clearly in 1807 what all the world 
saw in 1815, that our difficulties with England and 
France were only "consequential to the great strug- 
gle between those nations." He sought, like an- 
other great Democratic President in our own day, 
to preserve our neutrality on the basis of the ex- 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 275 

pectation of equal justice from both belligerents. 
He hoped to bide out the storm by patience. He 
wanted to remove the causes of friction between 
the United States and the warring countries of 
Europe, even at the expense of some inconvenience 
and loss to ourselves. "Till they return to some 
sense of moral duty," he wrote to John Taylor, of 
Carolina, in January, 1808, "we keep within our- 
selves. This gives time. Time may produce peace 
in Europe. Peace in Europe removes all causes of 
difficulty." The result of his policy was not war, 
but rather the postponement of the war for five 
years. He could have accomplished his purpose as 
well, however, if he had not put on the lion's skin 
to frighten Canning and Napoleon Bonaparte ! 

On December 18, 1807, Jefferson, already unoffi- 
cially informed of the British orders of November 
11, asked Congress in a brief message to "inhibit 
the departure of our vessels from the ports of the 
United States." In four days the Embargo Act, 
forbidding the exportation of goods from the United 
States to foreign nations by land or sea, passed both 
Houses of Congress by large majorities. The em- 
bargo was a revival of the policy of 1774 and 1794, 
when we sought to discipline England into respect 
for our commercial rights by proscribing her valuable 
trade. But, of course, the embargo was a double- 
edged weapon. For every bushel of wheat and bale 
of cotton that we refused to send across the Atlan- 



276 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

tic, for every consignment of meat and flour that 
was stopped at the Canadian border, we had to 
deny ourselves an equal value in the imported com- 
forts and luxuries of life which, with our growing 
wealth and population, were becoming more of a 
necessity each year. Every vessel tied to the wharf 
meant the loss of freight fees which the European 
war had raised to such a point that one successful 
voyage out of three meant a profit to the carrier. 
Even in the " simple colonial days" of 1774, in spite 
of the fervor of our Revolutionary protest, it had 
been almost impossible to enforce the non-importa- 
tion agreement. How long, then, would our coun- 
try acquiesce in the complete suspension of a foreign 
trade which by the year 1808 had reached an annual 
volume of fifty million dollars? William Pinkney, 
our minister at London, put his finger on the spot 
when he wrote home to Madison in the summer of 
1808: "The Embargo and the loss of our trade are 
deeply felt here, and will be felt with more severity 
every day . . . but our measures . . . have not 
been decisive, because we have not been thought capa- 
ble of persevering in self-denial, which is no more than 
prudent abstinence from destruction and dishonor." 
The authorities in England naturally did every- 
thing in their power to defeat the embargo. They 
tempted American ships to sail for their ports by 
suspending the navigation acts in their favor and 
issuing licenses for them to trade with the forbidden 
ports of the continent. They had ample cause to 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 277 

anticipate the failure of the embargo through the 
reports of political disaffection in America, which 
was stimulating and supplementing the strong mo- 
tives of economic interest. The " Federal mon- 
archists" of New England and New York, with 
Timothy Pickering at their head, were pursuing a 
course little short of downright treason to accom- 
plish the discomfiture of Jefferson. They declared 
that the embargo was laid at the behest of Napo- 
leon. Pickering wrote to Canning's special envoy, 
Rose: "The interests of the United States are in- 
terwoven with those of Great Britian and our safety 
depends on hers." He threatened the secession of 
New England in a letter to James Sullivan, the Re- 
publican governor of Massachusetts, declaring that 
"the States whose farms are on the ocean and whose 
harvests are gathered in every sea," must "seriously 
consider" how to preserve their interests. "Every 
man in New England," reported the British agent, 
Henry, to Governor Craig of Canada, "is opposed 
to war and attached to the course of England. 1 

1 Another agent of the British Government, John Howe, reported 
from Boston to the lieutenant-governor of Halifax, May 5, 1808: 
"They [the New Englanders] appear to blame their own govern- 
ment more than ours. . . . The irritation against Great Britain is 
fast wearing off. . . . They feel how necessary her friendship is to 
their prosperity." And from New York he wrote, speaking of the 
sentiment in Connecticut: "Here they speak on the subject with a 
degree of boldness that astonished me, and many of them even 
publicly lamenting that ever they were separated from Great 
Britain." Howe thought the administration would declare war 
against England in order to prevent the secession of New England. 
Professor Channing called the letters that Rose carried home with 
him from the Federalists "unpatriotic and treasonable." 



278 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

The embargo was violated openly in the Northern 
States, in spite of a strict enforcing act to control 
even the coastwise trade, and the patrol of the 
Canadian border by armed troops. 

Jefferson's embarrassment was painful. Not only 
did he have to endure the slanders of his political 
enemies, who charged him with the deliberate ruin 
of his country's prosperity, 1 but he had to bear the 

1 The violence of the attack on Jefferson may be measured by the 
following lines from William Cullen Bryant's poem, called The 
Embargo. Bryant was fourteen years old when the poem was 
written, in 1808. 

"Curse of our nation, source of countless woes, 
From whose dark womb unreckoned misery flows: 
Th' embargo rages, like a sweeping wing, 
Fear lowers before, and famine stalks behind. 

r And thou, the scorn of every patriot's name, 
Thy country's ruin and her council's shame! 
Poor servile thing ! Derision of the brave ! 
Who erst from Tarleton fled to Carter's cave; 
Thou who when menaced by perfidious Gaul, 
Didst prostrate to her whiskered minions fall; 
And when our cash her empty bags supplied j 
Didst meanly strive the foul disgrace to hide; 
Go, wretch, resign the presidential chair, 
Disclose thy secret measures, foul or fair. 
Go, search with curious eyes for horned frogs, 
'Mid the wild waste of Louisianian bogs; 
Or where Ohio rolls his turbid stream, 
Dig for huge bones, thy glory and thy theme. 

But quit to abler hands the helm of state 
Nor image ruin on thy country's fate. . . ." 



And so on for over five hundred lines. Of course, as Parton says, 
"this boy, gifted as he was, could only be the melodious echo of the 
talk he had heard in his native village." 









THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 279 

new reproach of the sacrifice of principles which he 
once had held sacred and of such harmony as was 
left in his distracted party. In 1794 he had pro- 
tested violently against the use of the militia by 
the President to put down the Whiskey Rebellion 
in western Pennsylvania. But when the embargo 
was resisted at Oswego in the summer of 1808 he ad- 
vised Governor Tompkins, of New York, to march 
against the rebels: "I think it so important to crush 
these audacious proceedings and to make the offend- 
ers feel the consequences of individuals daring to 
oppose a law by force, that no effort should be 
spared to compass this object. " His cabinet, a 
model of harmony till now, divided on the question 
of maintaining the embargo. "Most fervently 
ought we to pray," wrote Robert Smith to Gallatin, 
in August, 1808, "to be relieved from the various 
embarrassments of said Embargo." A Republican 
governor of Massachusetts at one end of the coun- 
try, and a Republican justice of the supreme court 
from Charleston at the other end of the country, 
condemned the measure. The Federalist Justice 
Story declared that the embargo "went to the ut- 
most limit of constructive power under the Consti- 
tution." This was the kind of indorsement with 
which the author of the Kentucky Resolutions was 
ending his administration. 

Jefferson had decided in 1805 not to accept a 
third term. Like Jackson and Roosevelt after him, 



280 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

he selected a member of his cabinet for a successor, 
and easily commended him to the party by the 
weight of his own influence. James Madison was 
nominated by eighty-three out of eighty-nine votes 
in a Congressional caucus convened in January, 
1808. The anti-administration Republicans of the 
South favored James Monroe, whom John Randolph 
had been " grooming " for the presidency ever since 
his return from the English mission in 1806; while 
the disaffected Republicans of New York supported 
the candidacy of Vice-President Clinton. C. C. 
Pinckney and Rufus King were again the Federalist 
candidates. All of New England, except Vermont, 
reverted to the Federalist column, but still Madison 
carried the country by one hundred and twenty-two 
votes to forty-seven for Pinckney and six for Clin- 
ton. In his farewell message to Congress, in No- 
vember, 1808, Jefferson praised the embargo as 
having frustrated the outrages "which meant war 
if resisted and the sacrifice of the vital principle of 
our national independence if submitted to." The 
House voted to maintain the embargo by the large 
majority of ninety-six to twenty-six. But with the 
attempt to apply the severe Enforcing Act of Janu- 
ary 9, 1809, resistance became so wide-spread and 
desperate that Congress raised the general embargo 
and substituted therefor a Non-Intercourse Act 
with Great Britain and France. It was the begin- 
ning of the end of Jefferson's policy of "peaceful 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 281 

coercion." Unwilling to commit his successor to 
the battle which he could not win himself, Jefferson 
signed the act on March 1, 1809, and three days 
later returned to private life. 

The administration of Thomas Jefferson was a 
notable period in the development of the American 
nation. When he came to the presidency in 1801 
our domain was bounded on the west by the Missis- 
sippi River, we touched the Gulf of Mexico at no 
point, no white man had crossed the continent, and 
but few were familiar with the shores of Lakes 
Michigan, Huron, and Superior. When he left the 
presidency eight years later the limits of the United 
States were the Rockies, the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi was ours, Lewis and Clark had penetrated the 
wilderness to the Pacific coast, and John Jacob 
Astor was planning his fur-posts on the Columbia 
River. Our population had grown from five mil- 
lion to seven million two hundred and fifty thou- 
sand, and was rapidly filling in the land between 
the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. Ohio, ad- 
mitted as a State in 1802, with some fifty-five thou- 
sand inhabitants, counted two hundred and thirty 
thousand in 1810. Kentucky had grown from two 
hundred and twenty thousand to four hundred and 
six thousand, Tennessee from one hundred and five 
thousand to two hundred and sixty-one thousand, 
the Mississippi Territory from eight thousand to 
forty-one thousand. Our trade down the great 



282 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

river, now wholly American from source to mouth, 
more than doubled during Jefferson's second term, 
reaching a figure in 1809 which foretold the day, not 
distant, when forty per cent of the foreign com- 
merce of the United States should pass through the 
port of New Orleans. In the year before the Em- 
bargo Act took effect our exports and imports 
reached the considerable sum of one hundred and 
eight million dollars and one hundred and thirty- 
eight million dollars respectively — a total volume 
of trade not to be reached again until the year 1835. l 
Jefferson's mind expanded with the country. His 
political philosophy broadened and his constitu- 
tional straitness was relaxed. Little by little the 
cautious responsibility with which he wished to 
see the executive circumscribed had yielded to the 
splendid opportunities for the exercise of power 
which the possession of high office brought. Before 
the close of his term he spoke and acted like a na- 
tionalist of the Federalist school. The erstwhile en- 
emy of an industrial economy with its large cities 
and its thousands of "artificers," "thepanderers of 
vice and the instruments by which the liberties of 

1 The Embargo and Non-Intercourse Acts suddenly reduced ex- 
ports to $22,000,000 and imports to $56,000,000 in 1808, and 
$52,000,000 and $59,000,000 respectively in 1809, which was far 
from a "total annihilation" of our commerce. The nadir was 
reached in the War of 1812, when our exports sank to $6,000,000 
and our imports to $12,000,000 in the year 1814. From the con- 
clusion of peace the recovery was steady, except in the panic year 
of 1819. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 283 

a country are overthrown/' spoke sympathetically 
in his last message to Congress, in November, 1808, 
of the considerable investments of capital in indus- 
tries destined to become permanent under the aus- 
pices of cheaper materials and subsistence, of the 
freedom of labor from taxation, and of protecting 
duties ( ! ) and prohibitions. The erstwhile guardian 
of the "general government" within the limits defi- 
nitely traced by the clauses of the Constitution, now 
suggested that Congress might appropriate the sur- 
plus of its revenues "to the improvement of roads, 
canals, rivers, education, and other great founda- 
tions of prosperity and union." But through all 
the phases of political development, amid the vari- 
ous vicissitudes of public and private fortune, in 
office or out of office, from his mature youth to his 
vigorous old age, there was one principle, sacred as 
a revelation from on high, from which Jefferson 
never swerved. He was convinced that the land of 
America, with all its material resources, belonged in 
full, undelegated possession to the successive gen- 
erations of living men; that their rulers were but 
their honored servants, their laws the changing 
record of their evolving will, and their institutions 
the temporary form in which the travailing spirit 
of freedom was clothed. Thomas Jefferson believed 
in democracy. 

Jefferson retired from the presidency under the 
shadow of the defeat of his long-cherished policy of 



284 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

"peaceful coercion. " On the eve of his departure 
from Washington he set his signature to the first 
and only important bill that Congress passed 
against his wishes during the eight years of his 
presidency. Still, when the great democrat took 
his quiet way to Monticello, men forgot the present 
discomfiture and remembered only the long service 
of forty years continuous devotion to his country. 
Congratulatory addresses poured in upon him from 
all sides. The memorial of his native State was 
particularly eloquent and touching. It reviewed 
the accomplishments of the administration, the 
pomp and state laid aside, the patronage discarded, 
the internal taxes abolished, the debt discharged, 
the pirates of the Mediterranean chastised, the 
national domain vastly increased. It recalled the 
peace with the civilized world, preserved through a 
season of uncommon difficulty and trial, the good- 
will cultivated with the unfortunate aborigines of 
our country and the civilization humanely extended 
among them/ , and "that theme which above all 
others the historic genius will hang upon with rap- 
ture, the liberty of speech and the press preserved 
inviolate, without which genius and science are 
given to men in vain." 

"From the first brilliant and happy moment of 
your resistance to foreign tyranny," the address 
concludes, "to the present day, we mark with plea- 
sure and with gratitude the same uniform and con- 



THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 285 

sistent character — the same warm and devoted at- 
tachment to liberty and the Republic, the same 
Roman love of your country, her rights, her peace, 
her honor, her prosperity. How blessed will be the 
retirement into which you are about to go! How 
deservedly blessed it will be! For you carry with 
you the richest of all rewards, the recollection of a 
life well spent in the service of your country, and 
proofs the most decisive of the love, the gratitude, 
the veneration of your countrymen. " 



CHAPTER X 
JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 

/ have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every 
form of tyranny over the mind of man. (Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, 
September 23, 1800.) 

Seventeen years of life were left to Thomas Jef- 
ferson after his retirement from the presidency, 
years filled with the multifarious activities of a 
mind which never lost the zest of curiosity or the 
fine edge of intellectual discrimination. The quiet 
pursuits which he had often longed for amid the 
cares of public office were now his to enjoy to the 
full. He revelled in his books, his family, his acres, 
his buildings, his gardens, his undisturbed morn- 
ings of study, his relaxed hours of genial intercourse 
with a host of devoted friends and welcome guests. 
On quitting office, Jefferson had taken the lauda- 
ble resolution not to act the role of "the power 
behind the throne/ ' He published a circular letter 
in March, 1809, declaring that he " would never 
interpose in any case with the President or the 
heads of departments in any application whatever 
for 05106." He insisted that he had no remotest 
wish to dictate the policy of his successors in the 
presidential office. He had " taken final leave of 

286 



JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 287 

politics." Having "gladly laid down the distress- 
ing burthen of power," he had "exchanged the 
newspapers for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton 
and Euclid." "The swaggering on deck as a pas- 
senger," he playfully wrote to his son-in-law, John 
Eppes, in 1813, "is so much more pleasant than 
climbing the ropes as a seaman" — and much more 
in the same vein. 

But in this matter Jefferson yielded somewhat to 
a besetting temptation of his nature, namely, that 
of self-deception through the fervor of his own pro- 
testations. He was far too active a man and far 
too thoroughly identified with the life of the Re- 
publican party and solicitous of its fortunes to ab- 
jure politics during the exciting days of the War of 
1812, and the uncertain days of national reconstruc- 
tion which followed. Especially when the chief 
magistracy was held for sixteen of the seventeen 
years of his retirement by two of his closest friends 
and political lieutenants. Presidents Madison and 
Monroe consulted the oracle of Monticello on every 
important crisis of their administrations. Their 
published correspondence with Jefferson contains 
only a partial record of their indebtedness to him, 
for they frequently made the pilgrimage in person 
to Monticello for long and intimate conferences. 

A striking example of the influence he exerted on 
the administration at Washington is furnished by a 
letter which he wrote on October 24, 1823, in his 



288 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

eighty-first year, to President Monroe, in answer 
to the latter's request for his opinion on Canning's 
proposal of joint action between Great Britain and 
the United States to warn the Holy Alliance to 
keep its hands off the western hemisphere. The 
letter was written six weeks before the President 
announced his famous Monroe Doctrine to Con- 
gress. It reads: "Our first and fundamental maxim 
should be never to entangle ourselves in the broils 
of Europe. Our second, never to suffer Europe to 
meddle with cis-Atlantic affairs. America, north 
and south, has a set of interests distinct from those 
of Europe and peculiarly her own. ... I could 
honestly, therefore, join in the declaration . . . 
that we will oppose with all our means the forcible 
interposition of any other power, as auxiliary, sti- 
pendiary, or under any other form or pretext, and 
most especially their [the former colonies of Spain 
in the western hemisphere] transfer to any power 
by conquest, coercion, or acquisition in any other 
way." Monroe put these ideas into his message of 
December 2, 1823. 

Jefferson's political prognostications, however, 
were not always right, nor his judgments always 
sound. He was curiously mistaken in his prophecy 
of the course of the War of 1812, when he wrote to his 
old friend, General Kosciusko, June 28, 1812: "Our 
present enemy will have the sea to herself, while we 
shall be equally predominant at land, and shall 



JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 289 

strip her of all her possessions on this continent." 
Great Britain did not have the sea to herself, and 
Detroit, Bladensburg, and Sackett's Harbor are a 
sufficient commentary on our "predominance at 
land." The easy optimism with which the Southern 
statesmen, from the knightly young Clay to the 
venerable Jefferson, assumed a rapid and jaunty 
conquest of Canada by our militia, is still a matter 
of wonder to the historian. "The acquisition of 
Canada this year as far as the neighborhood of 
Quebec," wrote Jefferson to Duane, in August, 1812, 
"will be a mere matter of marching, and will give 
us experience for the attack of Halifax the next and 
the final expulsion of England from the American 
continent." Jefferson didn't go quite to the length 
that Clay did, however, in declaring that the con- 
quest of Canada could be accomplished by a thou- 
sand Kentucky riflemen ! 

On the whole, it seems as though Jefferson in his 
later years reverted to the particularistic theories 
of government from which he had grown away dur- 
ing his tenure of office. The Hartford Convention, 
the nationalist tendencies in the increase of the 
army, the raising of the tariff, the re-establishment 
of the bank, the movement for internal improve- 
ments at national expense, revived his apprehension 
of the renaissance of Federalism. Perhaps, too, in 
the reminiscences of his earlier days of jealous com- 
bat against the centralizing tendencies of Alexander 



290 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Hamilton, and in the ordering and editing of those 
random notes which he had jotted down during his 
official career in Philadelphia and Washington — the 
famous and regrettable Anas — he experienced a 
fresh realization of the dangers of Federal usurpa- 
tion. Nor could he have been indifferent to the 
rapid growth of the power of the Federal judiciary 
at the expense of States' rights in the successive de- 
cisions of the supreme court under the influence of 
Chief Justice Marshall, or to the appearance of 
Marshall's elaborate Life of Washington (1805), 
which gave a powerful Federalist interpretation of 
our government in its inaugural years. His purpose 
in publishing the Anas was chiefly to counteract the 
influence of Marshall's book, and he appealed to 
Madison and the younger men of the Republican 
party to take care that the people of the country 
should not be left without an adequate apologetic 
for Republican principles and policies. He feared 
that the Republican party, under its new and en- 
thusiastic leaders, like Calhoun, Porter, Cheves, and 
Clay, might drift from the true course. 

It is undoubtedly to this renewed fidelity to the 
doctrines of particularism and States' rights that we 
must attribute Jefferson's disappointing and reac- 
tionary attitude on the Missouri question. No man 
in America had championed the cause of negro 
emancipation with more consistency and vigor than 
Thomas Jefferson. From his entrance into the Vir- 






JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 291 

ginia House of Burgesses in 1769 to his retirement 
from the presidency, forty years later, his every 
public utterance and private opinion on the subject 
of slavery had been in favor of abolition. In the 
first draft of the Declaration of Independence he 
had made the encouragement of the slave-trade 
one of the heads of indictment against George III. 
Chosen with Wythe and Pendleton to revise the 
Virginia law code in 1779, he prepared an amend- 
ment emancipating all slaves born in the State after 
the passing of the act, and providing for their being 
educated in farming and the mechanical arts at 
public expense until they came of age, and then 
being colonized to some suitable place, supplied 
with arms, household implements, tools, seeds, do- 
mestic animals, and kept under the " alliance and 
protection" of the State until they should be nu- 
merous and strong enough to protect themselves. 
Shortly after his futile attempt to get emancipa- 
tion written into the revised Virginia law code, Jef- 
ferson composed his Notes on Virginia (published in 
Paris, in 1784), in which he deplored the evil effects 
of slavery on the manners and morals of the com- 
munity. "The whole commerce between master 
and slave," he wrote, "is a perpetual exercise of the 
most boisterous passions, the most unremitting des- 
potism on the one part and degrading submission 
on the other. Our children see this and learn to 
imitate it. . . . And can the liberties of a nation 



292 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

be thought secure when we have removed their only 
firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people 
that those liberties are the gift of God; that they 
are not to be violated but with his wrath ? Indeed, 
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is 
just, that his justice cannot sleep forever." 

In the same year that he published the Notes on 
Virginia, Jefferson introduced into a bill in Congress 
a clause excluding slavery from the whole of the ter- 
ritory of the United States between the Alleghanies 
and the Mississippi, south as well as north of the 
Ohio. The clause was lost by the vote of a single 
State only. 

Probably, finally, no single act of Jefferson's 
presidency gave him more personal satisfaction than 
his opportunity of reminding the Houses of Con- 
gress, in his message of 1806, that the time was ap- 
proaching when, by the expiration of the twenty- 
year limit set by the Constitution, they might pass 
a law putting an end to the slave-trade, and with it 
to those "violations of human rights which have 
been so long continued on the unoffending inhabi- 
tants of Africa, and which the morality, the repu- 
tation, and the best interests of our country have 
long been eager to proscribe." Jefferson renewed 
his devotion to the cause of emancipation in a letter 
to Edward Coles, in the autumn of 1814, reiterating 
his faith in the scheme of colonization, and deploring 
the fact that the younger generation, in whose own 



JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 293 

breast the flame of liberty had been kindled, were 
not more eager to extend the process to their negro 
brethren. For himself, he said, the time for action 
was past. Old Priam could not buckle on the 
armor of Hector. The enterprise of emancipation 
was for the young. ... "It shall have all my 
prayers — the only weapons of an old man." 

What more natural than to expect a man with 
such a record in word and deed in behalf of emanci- 
pation to hail with joy and support with ardor the 
efforts of the "restrictionists" in the Congress of 
1819-20 to exclude slavery from the proposed new 
State of Missouri and the remaining part of the 
Louisiana Purchase territory ? It was the first move- 
ment to stop the spread of slavery west of the Missis- 
sippi, as his own bill of 1784 had been the first move- 
ment to stop the spread of slavery west of the Alle- 
ghanies. Tallmadge's proposal that no more slaves be 
allowed to go into Missouri was like his own measure 
in the House of Burgesses many years before to de- 
clare free after one year any negro slave brought into 
the State of Virginia. The provision that negroes 
born in the State of Missouri should become free at 
the age of twenty-five was less radical than his own 
proposition of 1779 for Virginia that all children 
born of slaves should be free from their birth and 
should be placed under the tutelage of the State 
until old enough for colonization. Yet, in spite of 
all this, Jefferson opposed the imposition of any 



294 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

restriction regarding slavery upon Missouri by Con- 
gress as a condition of its admission as a State into 
the Union, and condemned the famous Compromise 
which forbade the extension of slavery into the rest 
of the territory of the Louisiana Purchase above 
the parallel of 36° 30'. 

In this matter Jefferson's abhorrence of the re- 
vival of Federalism got the better of his hatred for 
slavery. He could see in the policy of the restric- 
tionist only a ruse to restore the prestige of the 
northern champions of a consolidated government. 
He who once in his horror of slavery had " trembled 
for his country/' now found the impassioned pleas 
of Taylor, Slade, Tallmadge, and King for a race of 
freemen in our new West only hypocrisy and guile. 
"The Missouri question/' he wrote to William 
Pinkney, "is a mere party trick. The leaders of 
Federalism, defeated in their schemes of obtaining 
power by rallying partisans to the principle of mon- 
archism . . . have changed their tack and thrown 
out another barrel to the whale. They are taking 
advantage of the virtuous feelings of the people to 
effect a division of parties by a geographical line. 
. . . They are wasting Jeremiads on the miseries 
of slavery, as if we were advocates for it. Sincerity 
in their declamations should direct their efforts to 
the true point of the difficulty, and unite their coun- 
sels with ours in devising some reasonable and prac- 
ticable plan of getting rid of it." But what plan 
was either more reasonable or more practicable at 



JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 295 

the moment for getting rid of slavery than to pre- 
vent its going into the new lands west of the Missis- 
sippi, Jefferson, if he knew, did not state. Again he 
wrote to Lafayette in France, that the Missouri 
question was "not a moral question, but merely 
one of power: its object is to raise a geographical 
principle for the choice of a president, and the noise 
will be kept up until that is effected." And again, to 
General Dearborn, after the passage of the compro- 
mise: "Desperate of regaining their power under 
political distinctions, they [the Federalists] have 
wriggled into its seat under the auspices of morality, 
and are again in the ascendency from which their 
sins had hurled them." So the man whom cynics 
ridiculed for his idealism in politics lost the moral 
point of the Missouri question in his own cynical 
attitude, and comforted himself, for his country, 
with the miserable sophistry that the extension of 
slavery into the new West would lighten the dark 
cloud by dissipating it, and for his person, with the 
dismal thanksgiving that he would "not live to see 
the issue." 

Religious obloquy, which had pursued Jefferson all 
through his official life, did not cease with his retire- 
ment or even with his burial. He was accused by the 
orthodoxy of New England of having imported the 
atheistical doctrines of the French Jacobins to cor- 
rupt his countrymen. Ridiculous stories of his hos- 
tility to Christianity were circulated, even to the ru- 
mor of a presidential edict to suppress all copies of 



296 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

the Bible. But Jefferson was no more an atheist 
than he was a Jacobin. Whether he was a Christian 
or not depends on the definition of a word which has 
never been defined alike by any two of a multitude of 
sects. The Christianity of the priesthood and the 
Christianity of dogma he equally abhorred. He re- 
jected all doctrines which offended his reason or his 
ethics: the Trinity, predestination, the virgin birth 
of Christ, apostolic succession, the atonement, mira- 
cles, et cetera; but his writings abound with refer- 
ences to a Deity in whose hands are the issues of 
human affairs, and with expressions of faith in a 
future life where those parted on earth shall meet 
again. He fought strenuously against any connec- 
tion between church and state, as the endowed An- 
glican clergy of Virginia experienced to their sorrow; 
but he generally followed the worship and accepted 
the ministrations of the Episcopal Church, while 
he was a liberal contributor to churches of many 
denominations and a good friend to hosts of clergy- 
men. He rejected the doctrine of the inspiration 
of the Bible; but he knew the book better than most 
of his critics, and compiled with considerable labor 
a kind of " harmony of the Gospels/' called "The 
Jefferson Bible/' designed to cull out and arrange in 
order the essential teachings of Jesus. 1 It is prob- 

*He wrote to his friend, Charles Thompson, in January, 1816: 
"I have made a wee little book . . . which I call the Philosophy of 
Jesus. It is a paradigm of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts 
out of the book and arranging them on the pages of a blank-book, in 



JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 297 

able that he did not differ essentially from Wash- 
ington, Adams, or Franklin in his religious opinions, 
except that he was far more interested in religion 
than any of these. It is difficult to imagine a rev- 
erend stranger discussing religion for hours with the 
grave Washington or the pompous Adams or the 
canny Franklin, and departing under the impression 
that he had been conversing with a trained theolo- 
gian. But, then, these men were not "Jacobinical," 
therefore their heterodoxy was not dangerous. It 
was really Jefferson's political opinions that were 
persecuted in the New England pulpits under the 
head of "atheism and infidelity. " 

Least of all was Jefferson a propagandist in relig- 
ion. He never attempted to make a convert or 
wished to change another's creed. So sacredly pri- 
vate a matter did he consider the individual's rela- 
tion to God that he hesitated to communicate his 
religious ideas even to his own family and intimate 
friends. His eldest grandson and the administrator 
of his estate, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, wrote to 
his biographer, H. S. Randall, in 1856: "Of his relig- 

a certain order of time and subject. A more beautiful and precious 
morsel of ethics I have never seen. It is a document in proof that 
I am a real Christian, i. e., a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very- 
different from the Platonists who call me infidel and themselves 
Christians and preachers of the Gospel, while they draw all their 
characteristic dogmas from what its author never said or saw. 
They have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system be- 
yond the comprehension of man, of which the great reformer of 
the vicious ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return to earth, 
would not recognize one feature." 



298 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ious opinions his family know no more than the 
world. If asked by any one of them his opinion on 
any religious subject his uniform reply was that it 
was a subject each was bound to study assiduously 
for himself, unbiassed by the opinions of others 
. . . that after a thorough investigation they were 
responsible for the righteousness not the rightfulness 
of their opinions." At the same time he was patient 
and courteous with those who tried to " convert" 
him out of honest solicitude for his salvation. "I 
must ever believe that religion substantially good," 
he wrote to one such apostle in 1814, "which pro- 
duces an honest life, and we have been authorized 
by One whom you and I equally respect, to judge of 
the tree by its fruits. . . . Let us not be uneasy, 
then, about the different roads we may pursue, but 
following the guidance of a good conscience let us 
be happy in the hope that by these different paths 
we shall all meet in the end. ... I salute you 
with brotherly esteem and respect." 

In a word, Jefferson's religion was a system of 
practical ethics, built, as he believed, on the teachings 
of the Nazarene and supplemented by a deliberately 
undefined faith in a guiding Providence and a future 
state. "I have never permitted myself," he wrote 
to that rarest type of friend, a New England clergy- 
man, "to meditate a specific creed. These formulas 
have been the bane and ruin of the Christian church, 
its own fatal invention." In the midst of the busy 



JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 299 

first term in the White House, Jefferson found time 
to write a syllabus of the doctrines of Jesus com- 
pared with the moral codes of the Hebrews, the 
Greeks, and the Romans, to show the superiority of 
the Christian ethics. He sent the syllabus to Ben- 
jamin Rush with the comment: "These [views] are 
the result of a life of inquiry and reflection, and 
very different from that anti-Christian system im- 
puted to me by those who know nothing of my 
opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I am 
indeed opposed, 1 but not to the genuine precepts of 
Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense 
he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his 
doctrines in preference to all others, ascribing to 
him every human excellence, and believing he never 
claimed any other. " It was on these ethical princi- 
ples that Jefferson based a life which was noble, 
kindly, generous, dignified, sympathetic, and true. 
There is but one testimony from the host of friends, 
acquaintances, and visitors who enjoyed the hospi- 
tality of the master of Monticello, that he himself 
was the pattern of the righteous man described in 
his own favorite Psalm: 

"Lord, who's the happy man that may to thy blest 
courts repair, 
Not stranger-like to visit them, but to inhabit there ? 

1 He wrote to Colonel Pickering in 1822, thanking him for a copy 
of Channing's sermons: "Had there never been a commentator there 
never would have been an infidel." 



300 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Tis he whose every thought and deed by rules of virtue 

moves, 
Whose generous tongue disdains to speak the thing his 

heart disproves." 

Nevertheless, Jefferson's life at Monticello, for 
all the love and veneration that surrounded it, was 
not free from care. Debt dogged his footsteps to 
the grave. The portion of the Wayles property 
which his wife brought him as a dowry was heavily 
encumbered, and before he had finally paid off his 
English creditors over a period of depreciated cur- 
rency and depressed land values, the debt "swept 
away nearly half of the estate." During his forty 
years of frequent absence from Monticello in his 
country's service his farms were left in the hands of 
overseers. When he returned in 1809 to take charge 
of his property in person a series of misfortunes 
awaited him. Cold weather and the ravages of the 
Hessian fly reduced the crops of 1810 and 1811. The 
interruption of our foreign trade by the Embargo 
and Non-Intercourse Acts closed valuable markets 
to his tobacco and raised the price of necessary 
commodities, like farm implements and clothing for 
his slaves, to a ruinous figure. The war with Great 
Britain still further aggravated the distress by its 
close blockade of Chesapeake Bay. And when the 
war was over an entirely new economic adjustment 
followed. The fluid capital of the North was turned 
into mills and factories. The planters of the South 



JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 301 

carried their slaves across the Alleghanies into the 
rich Gulf and river lands of the Mississippi Territory. 
The value of the upland acres sank, and the farm- 
ing gentry declined before the rising barons of the 
cotton plantation. There is no more pathetic pic- 
ture in our economic history than the gradual decay 
of the splendid estates of the old families of Vir- 
ginia, whom neither poverty nor penury could wean 
from their generous traditions of social dignity and 
limitless hospitality. 

It was not alone the inexorable laws of economic 
displacement that brought Jefferson into financial 
straits. Rigid economy in his household and on 
his estate would have allowed him to finish his days 
in ease and comfort, if not in affluence. But Jeffer- 
son could not practise economy. He had expensive 
tastes. He loved rare books and fine horses. Even 
so complete a connoisseur as Daniel Webster waxed 
enthusiastic over the quality of his wines. He was 
still spending considerable sums on his beloved man- 
sion of Monticello, thirty years after he had brought 
his bride to its new chambers through the deep snow 
of New Year's night, 1772. The doors of Monti- 
cello were never closed to friend or stranger. Be- 
sides his own numerous family of dependants, sis- 
ters, nephews, nieces, sons-in-law, and grandchildren, 
he supported a constant train of guests, invited and 
uninvited. They came with their families and ser- 
vants and horses and carriages. They stayed for 



302 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

weeks and months. His daughter, Mrs. Randolph, 
told of preparing as many as fifty beds for guests on 
some nights. They ate his good food and drank 
his choice wines. They literally devoured his sub- 
stance, like the suitors in Ulysses's halls at Ithaca. 

The vice-presidency is said to have been the only 
public position occupied by Jefferson in which he 
lived within his official salary. He left the presi- 
dency burdened with a debt of twenty thousand 
dollars, and had to apply for a loan at a Richmond 
bank in order to square his outstanding accounts in 
Washington before he could start with a clear con- 
science for Monticello. When the British burned the 
public buildings at Washington, in 1814, he offered 
to sell his fine collection of some thirteen thousand 
books to Congress, at the valuation which a com- 
mittee of the Houses should put upon them, partly 
to replace the Congressional Library which had 
been destroyed, but more especially to get a tem- 
porary relief from pressing creditors. After a rather 
heated debate as to whether the books of the " in- 
fidel Voltaire " ought to be purchased with the pub- 
lic funds, and considerable haggling over the esti- 
mated worth of the library, Congress finally voted 
to take it for twenty-three thousand nine hundred 
and fifty dollars, which was probably not more than 
half its value. The relief was but temporary, the 
pressure of the debt constant. 

At the opening of the year 1826, the last of his 



JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 303 

life, Jefferson's financial embarrassments threatened 
to drive him into bankruptcy and the loss of his 
estate. In despair he turned to the Virginia Legis- 
lature, asking permission to sell part of his property 
by lottery. "If it can be yielded," he wrote to a 
friend in the legislature, "I can save the house of 
Monticello and a farm adjoining to end my days in 
and bury my bones." His countrymen came for- 
ward with voluntary subscriptions to save his estate. 
New York contributed eight thousand five hundred 
dollars, Philadelphia five thousand dollars, Balti- 
more three thousand dollars. The project of the 
lottery was suspended, and the immediate demands 
were met, including twenty thousand dollars for 
which Jefferson became liable by the indorsement of 
his friend Wilson Cary Nicholas's note in 1819. 
The aged statesman was fortunately left to end his 
days under the happy delusion that this "pure and 
unsolicited offering of love" by his fellow country- 
men would suffice not only to pay off all his debts 
but to leave his dependants in ease at Monticello. 
The subscriptions ceased, however, and six months 
after Jefferson's death the costly furniture, pictures, 
china, and silver of Monticello were put up at auc- 
tion to help meet the debt of forty thousand dollars 
on the estate. Jefferson's only surviving child, his 
daughter, Mrs. Randolph, was forced to leave the 
beautiful mansion over which she had presided for 
nearly forty years, and was saved from utter desti- 



304 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

tution in her declining days only by the generosity 
of the legislatures of South Carolina and Louisiana, 
each of which made her a grant of ten thousand 
dollars. Monticello passed into the hands of 
strangers. 

Jefferson found relief from the financial worries of 
his declining years in absorbing devotion to the no- 
blest work of his noble life, the establishment of a 
great liberal and democratic university. "A sys- 
tem of general instruction/' he wrote in 1818, "which 
shall reach every description of our citizens, from 
the highest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, 
so it will be the latest, of all the public concerns 
in which I shall permit myself to take an interest." 
In season and out of season, at home and abroad, 
in the midst of public duties and in retirement at 
Monticello, he spread the doctrine of popular edu- 
cation with the fervor of an apostle: "Preach, my 
dear sir, a crusade against ignorance/' he wrote to 
George Wythe from Paris in 1786. "Establish and 
improve the law for educating the common people. 
Let our countrymen know that the people alone can 
protect us against these evils." 1 In his annual 
message to Congress in 1806 he declared that edu- 
cation should be "placed among the articles of pub- 
lic care," and recommended "a national establish- 

1 Jefferson is speaking in this part of his letter of the miseries with 
which the rich and favored land of France is burdened by its Court, 
its nobility, and its priesthood, because the people are too ignorant 
to realize and too passive to throw off their abject condition. 



JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 305 

ment for education ... a public institution which 
could apply those sciences ... all the parts of 
which contribute to the improvement of the coun- 
try, and some of them to its preservation. ,, 

But the idea of a national university found no 
more favor with Congress than had the scheme of 
public schools with the burgesses and the county 
courts of Virginia. It was not until Jefferson, freed 
from the burdens of office, bent his whole energy to 
the cause of the education of his countrymen that 
the opposition of generations of social and religious 
prejudice began to yield to the persuasion of his 
faith. A few important men, including Madison, 
Monroe, W. C. Nicholas, James Breckenridge, Peter 
Carr, supported him faithfully, but the one person 
without whose constant co-operation Jefferson could 
hardly have succeeded in founding the University 
of Virginia was Joseph C. Cabell, a brilliant young 
lawyer who had travelled widely in Europe studying 
schools and universities, and who for eighteen years 
in the Senate of Virginia (1811-29) fought a noble 
battle for the encouragement of higher education 
by the State. Jefferson and Cabell worked together 
in perfect harmony. Their correspondence pertain- 
ing to the foundation of the university was pub- 
lished anonymously at Richmond on Cabell's death 
in 1856. It fills three hundred and seventy-seven 
octavo pages ! 

Jefferson would have liked to see his alma mater, 



306 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

William and Mary College, converted into a liberal 
non-sectarian university; but the traditions of that 
ancient, endowed seat of Anglicanism were too 
strong to be overcome. A new centre of learning 
had to be created. With the aid of voluntary sub- 
scriptions from a group of nine gentlemen interested 
in his scheme, contributing himself a thousand dol- 
lars which he could not spare, Jefferson rescued the 
old Albemarle Academy at Charlottesville from a 
moribund condition, and got the legislature to in- 
corporate the institution, in February, 1816, under 
the name of the Central College. Three years later 
the college was widened into the University of Vir- 
ginia, a board of visitors was chosen, and Thomas 
Jefferson was unanimously elected rector. From 
that March meeting of 1819 until his death, seven 
years later, he labored unremittingly to build up a 
university which should be an ornament to his 
State and a centre of liberal learning. He himself 
chose the sites and drew the plans for the buildings, 
selected the bricks and timber, imported workers 
from Italy to carve the capitals of the columns. 
Almost every day he rode over to Charlottesville, 
four miles from Monticello, and remained for hours 
seated on a folding camp-stool of his own invention, 
superintending the building of his precious halls. 
When he could not go, he watched the work through 
a telescope mounted on one of the terraces at Mon- 
ticello. "He spent almost as much pains on the 



JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 307 

great rotunda of the central hall of the college/' says 
Herbert Baxter Adams, "as Michael Angelo did on 
the dome of St. Peter's.' ' And he had the great 
satisfaction of living to see the university opened 
to its first class of students in the spring of the year 
1825. 

The University of Virginia was the most liberal 
institution of learning in the world. 1 Its curriculum 
was wholly elective. There were no religious tests 
for professors or pupils. Attendance at chapel was 
voluntary. The modern languages and the sciences 
stood on a par with the classics and mathematics. 
The honor system in examinations and student self- 
government in discipline were adopted. The uni- 
versity was divided into a number of "schools," so 
that specialization could begin with the pupil's en- 
trance. There was no president of the faculty. 
The professors stood on an equality and exercised a 
chairmanship in turn. Physical training was com- 
pulsory. Agriculture and the science of government 
were for the first time recognized as subjects worthy 
of a place in a university curriculum. Students of 
theological schools were invited to attend the uni- 
versity, enjoying the privilege of the lectures, the 
library, and "any other accommodations we can 
give them." "By bringing the sects together, and 

1 Jefferson wrote Mr. Roscoe on December 7, 1820: "The institu- 
tion will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. 
For here we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead, 
nor to tolerate any error, so long as reason is left free to combat it." 



308 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

mixing them with the mass of other students/ ' said 
Jefferson, a we shall soften their asperities, liberalize 
and neutralize their prejudices, and make the gen- 
eral religion a religion of peace, reason, and moral- 
ity." The student of the history of education stands 
amazed at the "modernness" of the various mea- 
sures which Jefferson recommended in his famous 
series of reports as rector of the University of Vir- 
ginia. Some of these measures have been adopted 
by us only yesterday, as it were; 1 others still wait 
until, to use Jefferson's phrase, "the public mind 
can bear them." 

The influence of Jefferson and his co-workers in 
the cause of higher education extended far beyond 
the boundaries of Virginia. The University of 
Michigan, the first of that splendid group of pio- 
neer colleges in our Western States, was founded by 
Jefferson's friend, Judge Woodward, of Michigan 
Territory, in full sympathy with the Jeffersonian 
principles. The new State of Maine (1820) inserted 
in its constitution a "literary article" for the "gen- 
eral diffusion of the advantages of education" 
through the State, which the president of the con- 
stitutional convention and first governor of Maine, 
William King, acknowledged that he owed to Jef- 

1 For example, the recent arrangement between Union Theological 
Seminary and Columbia University, by which Jefferson's plan of 
the interchange of courses between the religious and the secular in- 
stitutions was adopted, nearly a hundred years after his suggestion, 
as a "new departure" in education. 



JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 309 

ferson's suggestion during a visit to the " hospitable 
mansion " of Monticello the previous winter. George 
Ticknor, another welcome guest at Monticello, took 
back to his new professorship at Harvard valuable 
advice on the advantages of the elective system and 
the emphasis on the study of the modern languages. 
Herbert Baxter Adams could well call the University 
of Virginia "the noblest work of Jefferson's life," 
marking "the continuation of his personal, vitaliz- 
ing influence in Virginia and in the country at large 
more truly than any other of his original creations." 
It was not a merely professional scientific motive 
that led Jefferson to devote himself with such zeal to 
the cause of education in Virginia and the country 
at large. The enlightenment of the people was for 
him the corner-stone of the structure of democracy, 
hence a system of free, popular education was a 
chief article in his political creed. In the admirable 
preamble to the revisers' bill of 1779, "For the more 
general diffusion of knowledge," he declared that 
even under the best forms of government those in- 
trusted with power had sometimes perverted that 
power into tyranny. "The most effectual means 
of preventing this," he continued, "would be to illu- 
minate as far as practicable the minds of the people 
at large, and more especially to give them knowledge 
of those facts which history exhibiteth, that, pos- 
sessed thoroughly of the experience of other ages 
and countries, they may be enabled to know ambi- 



310 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

tion under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their 
natural powers to defeat its purposes." And again 
in his Notes on Virginia he wrote: " Every govern- 
ment degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the 
people alone. The people themselves are its only 
safe depositories. And to render even them safe, 
their minds must be improved to a certain degree. 
... It has been thought that corruption is re- 
strained by confining the right of suffrage to a few 
of the wealthier people, but it would be more effec- 
tually restrained by an extension of that right to 
such numbers as would bid defiance to the means 
of corruption." 

Finally, to complement and justify Jefferson's 
conviction that the political health of a people de- 
pends on its own enlightened participation in gov- 
ernment, and that "no nation," as he nobly wrote 
in his rectorial report of 1821, "is permitted to live 
in ignorance with impunity," came his faith in the 
illuministic philosophy of the perfectibility of the 
human mind. "We should be far from the per- 
suasion that man is fixed by the law of his nature 
at a given point," he wrote to the Virginia Legislature 
in 1818, "that his improvement is a chimera and 
the hope delusive of making himself wiser, happier, 
or better than our forefathers were. ... As well 
might it be urged that the wild and uncultivated 
tree, hitherto yielding sour and bitter fruit only, 
can never be made to yield better. ... It cannot 



JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 311 

be but each generation must advance the knowledge 
and well-being of mankind, not infinitely as some 
have said, but indefinitely and to a term which no 
man confix and foresee." 

To the end of his days Jefferson maintained his 
faith in the essential accuracy and justice of the 
judgment of the mass of the " common people." For 
him the people were not an object for government 
to play upon, as it were, but government itself was 
a function of the people. Liberty was not a privi- 
lege granted by the government, but government 
was a responsibility delegated to its officers by the 
people. On this distinction hangs all the philosophy 
of democracy. The last letter penned by Jeffer- 
son's aged and trembling hand was a summons to 
his countrymen to renew with "undiminished de- 
votion" their faith in the rights of man and the 
blessings of self-government. The last word and 
gesture of his ebbing life was a hand raised feebly 
and the murmur: "Warn the committee to be on 
the alert." He died as he had lived, under the in- 
spiring compulsion of a single great aim — human 
freedom. Freedom was the text of his life: "I have 
sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against 
every form of tyranny over the mind of man." 
Freedom was the burden of his labors: "I endeavor 
to keep attention fixed on the main object of all 
science, the freedom and happiness of man." Free- 
dom was the legacy for which alone he wished to 



312 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

be remembered by his countrymen — freedom in 
government, freedom in creed, freedom in intellect. 
And so he wrote the epitaph which is inscribed upon 
the shaft that stands above his grave: 

HERE WAS BURIED 

THOMAS JEFFERSON 

AUTHOR 

OF THE DECLARATION OF 

AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 

THE STATUTE OF VIRGINIA 

FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND 

FATHER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 



Thomas Jefferson was not perfect. Who of mor- 
tals is? We can find flaws in his nature and faults 
in his character, errors of judgment and inconsis- 
tencies of behavior. He was not endowed with a 
sense of humor, which would have saved him in 
many a humiliating situation. His passion for 
humanitarian philosophy and radical democracy 
blinded him sometimes to the honesty of purpose 
and character of excellent men who differed from 
him. He had a congenital and unconquerable aver- 
sion to combativeness which his unfavorable critics 
have usually called " weakness" or " cowardice." 
At the same time his conviction of the necessity of 
having the political battles fought kept him urging 



JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 313 

others to the fray — a policy of indirection which has 
brought on him the charge of hypocrisy and finesse, 
of shielding himself behind his agents, and employ- 
ing his friends as catspaws to pull his hot political 
chestnuts from the fire. The man of speech who 
stands up in the battle of debate, giving and taking 
hard blows, looks a little askance on the man of the 
pen who carries on his campaign by private letters 
and quiet interviews, as if he must be engaged in 
" shady" dealings. And yet a private letter may 
be as honest as a harangue on the floor of Con- 
gress, and an after-dinner conversation as guileless 
as a campaign speech. The voluminous correspon- 
dence of Jefferson is naturally not free from the re- 
grettable expressions in which a man, whose political 
creed is as sacred to him as a religious faith, pours 
out his soul to a friend against the wickedness of his 
adversaries. The Mazzei letter and the Anas would 
better not have been written. And yet these in- 
stances are few. The sixteen thousand letters of 
Jefferson that have been preserved to us are a pre- 
cious heritage. They give us the portrait of a man 
of just mind and spotless honor, a kindly, generous, 
sagacious, patient man, marvellously gifted, tire- 
lessly active, holding the faith in democracy through 
good and evil days, persevering and noble in his 
aims, and all his ends his country's and mankind's. 
Shortly after noon on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth 
anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, 



314 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Jefferson died peacefully at Monticello, surrounded 
by an adoring family. Far away to the north, in 
the little town of Quincy, Massachusetts, another 
great American patriot and signer of the Declaration 
of Independence lay on his death-bed that same 
day. John Adams lingered till sunset. The last 
whispered words of his failing breath were: " Thomas 
Jefferson still lives/ ' Thomas Jefferson had al- 
ready passed away from earth, but John Adams's 
words were true, and will be true so long as men 
shall strive for peace, fraternity, and freedom. 



INDEX 



Adams, Henry, 214, 218, 224, 260, 

272 
Adams, Herbert B., 307, 309 
Adams, John, 30/., 41. 44, 54, 99, 

101, 111. 112, 113, 115, 126, 138/., 

158, 165 n., 172, 182, 188, 195/., 

200, 204 /., 208 /., 215 /., 245, 249, 

257, 297, 314 
Adams, Samuel, 13, 44 
Albemarle County, 3, 10, 13, 24, 

27, 95 
Alexander I, 269 

Alien Acts, 200/., 214, 218, 250 
Ames, Fisher, 175, 203 
Amiens, Treaty of, 229, 263, 272 
Anas, The, 154, 159, 211. 290, 313 
^Arnold, Benedict, 66, 82, 86, 94, 

95, 98 
Articles of Confederation, 98 
Astor, J. J., 281 

Bainbridge, Captain, 220 
Bank, National, 161 /. 
Barbary States, 118/., 273 
Barbe-Marbois, 122, 230 
Bayard, James A., 210 n., 219 
Berkeley, Admiral, 268 
Berlin Decree, 267, 271 
Bernard. Governor of Massachu- 

sets, 13 
Blennerhassett, 259 
Bonaparte (see Napoleon) 
Botetourt, Governor of Virginia, 

14. 17 
Braddock's Defeat, 3 
Brissot de Warville, 139 
Bryant, Wm. C, 278 
Bryce, James, 70 
Bunker Hill, 31, 263 
Burgesses, House of, 2/., 12, 20, 

28/., 33, 56, 67, 291 
Burgoyne, General, 76 
Burke, Edmund, 18, 22, 187, 251 
Burr, Aaron, 195. 206. 208/., 219/., 

243, 247, 252, 258/. 
Burr, Theodosia, 259 

Cabell, J. C, 305/. 

Canning, George, 269/., 275, 288 



Carr, Dabney, 17 
Carrington, Edward, 129 
Channing, Edward, 181, 231, 241 «., 

277 n. 
Charles II, 1, 55 
Charles III, of Spain, 235, 237 
Chase, Samuel, 201, 250/., 261 
Chastellux, Marquis of, 102 
Chesapeake Affair, 263/., 268/. 
Cicero, 4, 174 

Clay, Henry, 7, 34, 259, 289 
Clay, John, 34 
Clinton, General, 76/., 88 
Clinton, George, 165 n., 243, 280 
Coles, Edward, 92, 292 
Columbia University, 308 n. 
Committees of Correspondence, 

20/. 
Committees of Public Safety, 27 n. 
Common Sense, 38 
Concord Bridge, 11, 31 
Congress, of the Confederation, 103, 

104, 147, 157 
Constitution, of the United States, 

126/., 149/., 161/., 184, 201/., 

218 252 f 283 
Continental Congress, 22, 26/., 36/. 
Convention Parliament, 26 
Cornwallis, General, 66, 79, 80, 87 /., 

90, 92, 94, 101 
Craig, Governor of Canada, 277 
Curtis, W. E„ 132, 171 n. 

Danton, 178 

Dayton, Jonathan, 188 

Deane, Silas, 48, 57 

Dearborn, General, 295 

Declaration of Independence, 41 /., 
72, 141. 166, 211, 235, 250, 291, 
313/. 

Declaration on Colonies Taking up 
Arms, 32 /. 

De Meusnier, 110, 123 

Democratic-Republicans (see Re- 
publicans) 

Desmoulins, Camille, 132 

Dickinson, John, 21 n., 31 /., 37, 
40, 42 /. 

Dickinson, Lowes, 173 



315 



316 



INDEX 



Dorchester, Lord, 188 

Dunmore, Governor of Virginia, 17, 

28 /., 35 
Dupont de Nemours, 217, 228 

East India Company, 18 
Eaton, General, 259 
Embargo Act, 275/., 282, 300 
Eppes, Francis, 36, 134, 156 
Eppes, John, 287 
Eppes, Maria, 16 
Essex Case, 265 /. 
Essex Junto, 215, 217 

"Family Compact," 146 

Farewell Address, 195, 222 

Fauquier, Governor of Virginia, 5 

Federalists, 165, 175, 178, 185, 
192/., 198/., 206, 210, 215/., 
219, 234, 242, 244, 249, 277/., 295 

Fenno, John, 162 

Florida (see West Florida) 

Florida Blanca, 146 

Fox, C. J., 266/. 

France, aids America, 48/., 77, 97; 
our commerce with, 112/., 116, 
165, 187; our diplomacy with, 
197/. (see also French Revolu- 
tion and Napoleon); our treaties 
with (see Treaties) ; war with, 204 

Franklin, Benjamin, 37 n., 41, 43, 
45, 48, 57. 99, 101, 112/., 115, 121, 
136, 138, 147, 297 

Frederick the Great, 131 

French Revolution, 47, 117, 123/., 
132/., 135, 139, 164/., 183, 186/., 
193, 215, 295 /. 

Freneau, Philip, 162/., 211 

Gage, Governor of Massachusetts, 

22 
Gallatin, Albert, 218, 221, 258, 273, 

279 
Gaspee, 16 

Gates, General, 80/., 87, 217 
Genet, Edmond, 166/., 184, 187, 

189 
GeorgeIII.il, 18. 22/., 29, 31, 41/., 

47, 67, 133, 139, 271, 291 
Gerry, Elbridge, 106, 197/., 202 
Goethe, 4 

Greene, General, 87/., 94 
Grenville, George, 10 
Grey, Captain, 223 



"Hail Columbia," 199 

Halifax, 14 

Hamilton, Alexander, 71, 



128, 



151/., 169. 173, 175, 181, 189, 
191, 195/., 202/., 208/., 211,215, 
217, 219, 232, 243. 258, 289 

Hammond, John, 143 

Hancock, John, 43 

Harrison, Benjamin, 34, 43 

Hartford Convention, 289 

Harvard College, 309 

Harvey, John, 4 

Hastings, Warren, 6, 251 

Hay, George, 262 

Heath, General, 246 

Henry, John, 277 

Henry, Patrick, 8, 12/., 15, 17, 21 /., 
27, 34, 62 n., 75, 91, 133 

Hillsborough, Lord, 13 

"Holy Alliance," 288 

Hopkinson, Francis, 127, 151 

Howe, General, 76 

Jackson, Andrew, 214, 239, 259, 
279 

Jay, John. 30. 37, 40, 99, 101, 104, 
117, 126, 136, 138, 180, 187/., 
199, 208, 211 

Jefferson. Martha Skelton, 16, 100 

Jefferson, Peter, 2/. 

Jefferson, Thomas, birth, 2; edu- 
cation, 5/.; as lawyer, 8; as 
squire, 9/.; elected to burgess- 
es, 13/.; resists governor, 17; 
on power of Parliament, 21 ; the 
Summary View, 22/.; on Com- 
mittee of Public Safety, 27; an- 
swer to Lord North, 29/.; in 
Congress, 30/.; and religious 
liberty, 34, 61/., 295/.; house- 
hold at Monticello, 36, 300/.; 
Declaration of Independence, 41 /.; 
declines mission to Paris, 48, 57; 
political theories, 49/.; reforms 
Virginia laws, 56/.; and emanci- 
pation, 67/., 290/.; and educa- 
tion, 68/., 304/.; Governor of 
Virginia, 75/.; Western land 
sessions, 97/.; retirement, 99; 
accepts mission to France, 102; 
delayed, 103; in Congress again, 
103/.; plan for territorial govern- 
ment 107 /.; French mission, 
112/.; minister to France, 115/.; 
Mediterranean policy, 118/., 
220/., 242; and French Revolu- 
tion, 123/.; views on Constitution 
of U. S., 126/., 150/.; on repub- 
licanism, 130, 139, 169; secretary 
of State, 135/.; negotiations 
with England, 143/.; interest in 



INDEX 



317 



West, 145/., 223. 239; contest 
with Hamilton, 152/.; curbs 
Gen8t, 167/.; resigns, 169/.; 
builds Republican party, 173/.; 
financial theories, 181; democ- 
racy, 183, 283, 311/.; on Jay 
Treaty, 189; on Whiskey War, 
193/.; Vice-President, 195; on X 
Y Z Affair, 198/.; on Alien and 
Sedition Acts, 201 /.; election of 
1800, 206/.; as President, 213/.; 
purchases Louisiana, 223/.; on 
West Florida, 237/., 252/.; 
Lewis and Clark Expedition, 
239/.; re-elected. 242/.; prose- 
cutes judges, 250/.; Burr trial, 
258/.; Chesapeake Affair, 266/.; 
Embargo policy, 275 /.; retire- 
ment, 280/.; on War of 1812, 
288/.; on Missouri Compromise, 
290/.; religious beliefs, 295/.; 
at Monticello, 300/.; character, 
312/. 

Kentucky Resolutions, 201/., 216, 

219, 244, 279 
King, Rufus, 199, 203, 224, 243, 

263 /., 280 
King, William, 308 
Knox, Henry, 152, 188 
Kosciusko, 288 

Lafayette, General, 88, 89, 121, 

124/., 133, 295 
Laurens, Henry, 99, 101 
Laws of Virginia, 55 /. 
Lecky, W. E. H., 49 
Leclerc, General, 224 
Ledyard, William, 223 
Lee, Arthur, 48 
Lee, Henry, 83 /. 
Lee, R. H., 40, 62 n„ 179 
Lee, T. L., 57 n., 65 
Leslie, General, 66 
Lewis and Clark Expedition, 99, 

239 /., 281 
Lexington, battle of, 11, 31, [263, 

268 
Liancourt, Duke of, 214 
Lincoln, Abraham, 52, 74, 110, 153, 

185 
Lincoln, General, 13, 66 
Lincoln, Levi, 210 n., 217 
Livingston, Edward, 235 
Livingston, R. R., 40/., 225/., 

230/. 
Locke, John, 50 
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 152 



Louis XIV, 48, 112, 116/., 124, 

164/. 
Louisiana Purchase, 72, 223/., 264 
Louisiana Territory, 235 f., 242, 

293/. 
Luther, Martin, 181 
Luzerne, Marquis of, 102 
Lyon, Matthew, 242 

Macaulay, Lord, 10 

McKean, Governor of Pennsyl- 
vania, 209, 243 

McLeod, Captain, 92 

McMaster, J. B., 140, 169, 203 

Madison. James, 56, 62, 64, 66, 100, 
110, 116 n., 125/., 147, 162, 168, 
172, 182, 183 n., 196/., 206, 219, 
237, 250, 258, 273/., 280, 287 

Marbury vs. Madison, 250 

Marseillaise, the, 47 

Marshall, John, 2n„ 7, 84/., 118, 
141, 170, 178, 197/., 209, 250, 
261 /., 290 

Martin, Luther, 261 /. 

Mason, George, 57 n., 62 n., 65, 
180 

Mazzei, Philip, 313 

"Mediterranean Fund," 222 

Merry, Anthony, 213, 258 

"Midnight Judges," 211 n. 

Milan Decree, 270 

Mirabeau, 133 

Miranda, 204 n. 

Mississippi, Navigation of, 145/., 
226/. 

Missouri Compromise, 68, 290/. 

Mobile Act, 238 

Mohammedan pirates, 119/. 

Monroe, James, 62 n., 100, 103, 
126, 130, 140, 168, 182, 190/., 
197, 209, 217, 224, 226/., 231/.. 
237, 266/., 280, 287/. 

"Monticello," 5 n., 15/., 22, 24/., 
34/., 70, 91, 93, 99, 102, 133/., 
150, 169/., 182, 214, 238, 240, 

252, 284, 287, 299/., 306/. 
Montmorin, Count of, 116 
Moore, G. H., 33 

Morris, Gouverneur, 104/., 138, 

143, 168, 203 
Morris, Robert, 106, 153 
Morse, J. T.. 59 n., 76, 84, 89/., 

95, 116, 273 

Napoleon Bonaparte, 74, 142 n., 
186, 205, 223 /., 228 /., 234, 237 /., 

253, 256/., 264/. 
Naturalization Act, 200, 214, 218 



318 



INDEX 



Navigation Acts, 11 

Nelson, General, 82, 84, 91 

Nelson, Lord, 266 

Newburgh Address, 104 

Nicholas, Wilson Cary. 14, 182, 

256, 302 
Nicolas, George, 95 
Non-intercourse Act, 280, 300 
North, Lord, 15, 28/., 33, 49, 101 
Northwest Territory, 98, 109 
Notes on Virginia, 54, 73, 121/., 

291/., 310 

Odyssey, 248 

Orders in Council, 187, 269, 275 
Orleans, Territory of, 235 
Otis, James, 44/., 54 

Paine, Thomas, 38, 133 

Parkman, Francis, 240 

Parton, James, 114 

Pendleton, Edmund, 59, 65, 71, 

139, 291 
Pickering, John, 250/. 
Pickering, Timothy, 44, 191, 199, 

216. 277, 299 n. 
Pike, Zebulon, 241 n. 
Pinckney, C. C, 197/., 206, 208, 

243, 280 
Pinckney, Charles, 150 n. 
Pinckney, Thomas, 138, 148, 195, 

226 
Pinkney, William, 266/., 276, 294 
Pitt, William, 18, 46, 143, 266 
Polk, J. K., 237, 241 
Primogeniture, Laws of, 55 

"Quids," 256 

Randall, H. S., 9, 39, 42, 76, 297 
Randolph, Edmund, 2 n., 25, 99, 

151, 177, 193 
Randolph, Jane, 2 
Randolph, John, 34 

Randolph, John of Roanoke, 59, 

200, 219, 248 /., 255 /., 258, 261 /., 

270, 273/., 280 
Randolph, Martha, 16, 113, 133, 

172, 302 /. 
Randolph, Peyton, 12, 15, 22, 28/., 

34 
Randolph, Thomas Jefferson, 297 
Randolph, William, 1 
Report on Public Credit, Hamilton's, 

152, 156, 160 

Republicans, 165, 172, 178, 182/.. 
190, 192/., 198/., 215/., 247/., 
290 



Revolution, American, 10, 65/., 

76/., 101, 103. 141 
Revolution, French (see French 

Revolution) 
Richelieu, 230 
Richmond, 27, 57 n., 80, 82/., 85, 

88, 261 /., 305 
Robespierre, 186 
Rochambeau, General, 189 
Rockingham, Marquis of, 101 
Roman Law, 49 
Roosevelt, Theodore, 279 
Rose, George, 271, 277 
Rousseau, 49/., 133, 180 
"Rule of 1756," 187 
Rush, Benjamin, 299 
Rutledge, Edward, 30, 40, 141 
Rutledge, John, 31/. 

San Ildefonso, Treaty of, 223 
Scott, Sir William, 265 
Sedition Act, 182, 200 /. 
"Shadwell," 5, 9, 12. 15 
Shays's Rebellion, 131/., 178 
Shelburne. Lord, 101 
Sherman, Roger, 41, 106 
Short, William, 178 
Slavery, 67/., 110, 290/. 
Slave Trade, 42, 56, 292 
Smith, Robert, 271/., 279 
Stamp Act, 11/., 21, 26, 46, 101 
Steuben, Baron, 83/., 87, 89 
Story, Joseph, 214, 279 
Stuart, Archibald, 145 
Sullivan, General, 121 
Sullivan, Governor of Massachu- 
setts, 277 
Summary View, The, 22/., 30, 49 
Supreme Court, 152, 250 

Talleyrand, 197/., 204, 228, 230, 

253, 256 
Tallmadge, James, 293 /. 
Tammany Society, 164 
Tariff, of 1789, 152. 180 
Tarleton, General, 79, 90/. 
Taylor, John. 184, 202, 219, 275 
Tea, Destruction of, 19 
Tennis-Court Oath, 26 
Texas, 237 

Thompson, Charles, 43, 296 n. 
Thwaites, R. G., 240 
Ticknor, George, 309 
Tompkins, Governor of New York, 

279 
Tories, 46 

Toussaint Louverture, 225 
Townshend, Charles, 13, 18 



INDEX 



319 



Treaties, of 1778, 166, 191, 199, 
205; of 1783, 103, 105/., 149, 
191; Jay (1794), 142 n., 189/., 
199, 226, 263 /.; Pinckney (1795) 
142 n., 148, 226; of 1800, 142 n., 
205, 223; Louisiana Purchase 
(1803), 148 n., 224/. 

Turgot, 180 

Turreau, 268 

University of Virginia, 306 /. 

Vattel, 168 

Vergennes, Count of, 115, 146 
Victor, General, 236 
Voltaire, 392 



Washington, George, 2 n., 15, 21 n., 
27, 30/., 47, 62 n., 78/., 84/., 
88/., 94/., 104/., 114, 126, 129/., 
133/., 141, 143, 145, 150, 152, 
157/., 160, 163/., 165 n., 167, 



169/., 171 n., 172/., 178, 185, 

189/., 191/., 199, 204. 207, 213, 

220, 222/., 244/., 250, 297 
Wayles, John, 16 
Webster, Daniel, 62, 118, 185, 214, 

301 
West Florida, 238/., 252/., 272 
Whiskey War, 192, 279 
Wilkinson, General, 259/. 
William and Mary College, 5, 68, 

306/. 
Williamsburg, 5/., 21/., 27, 29, 57, 

65/., 177 
Wirt, William, 13 
Wythe, George, 7. 21 n., 57 n„ 65, 

71, 122. 291, 304 

X Y Z Affair, 197/., 204, 206, 216, 
263 

Yancey, Charles, 69 

Yeardley, Governor of Virginia, 2 

Yorktown, 47, 53, 66, 89, 97, 101 



627 >*m 



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